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Tales of Marriage and Divorce 




By THOMAS EDGAR WILLSON, 

Author of **It is the Law.,'" "Love Dies with the Kiss," Hearts are Trumjys," Etc. 

Fireside Series, 64, July, 1888. Issued Monthly. Extra. f3.00 per year. Entered at t lie New York 
Post-office as second-class matter. Copyrijjht by J. S. Ogilrie. 








corretffU^ 





1 

IF YOU WANT TO 


Build a House 

DON’T FAIL TO BUY 

Ogilvie’s House Plans. 

It contains plans and specifications for all kinds of houses 
costing from $500 to $5,000, and is just as valuable as most books 
that cost $5.00. 

It will be sent by mail postpaid to any addre.ss on receipt of 
only 25 cents* Sold by ail booksellers or address all orders to 

J. S. OGiLVIE, Publisher, 

57 JJOSE ST., NEW rOBli^ 


P. O. Box 2767. 


LUCK AND LOVE 


AND 

Tales of Marriage and Divorce, 

BY 

Thomas Edgar Willson, 

Author of It is the Law,” “For That,” 
“Love Dies with the Kiss,” ‘^^10,000/’ 
“Hearts are Trumps,” Etc., Etc., Etc. 

(Copyright, 1888, by J. S. Ogilvib.) 


J. S. OGILVIE, PUBLISHER, 

57 Rose Street, New York; 79 Wabash Avenue, Chicago. 


XalST? OiP BOOISIS 

THE FIRES^IDE SERIES. 

UI^IFORM[ WITH THIS BOOK. 

^1. The Mohawks, by Miss M. E. Bradd^. 

2. Lady Valworth’s Diamonds, by The Duchess. 

3. A House Party, by Ouida. 

4. At Bay, by Mrs. Alexander. 

5. Adventures of an Old Maid, by Belle C. Greene. 

6. Vice Versa, by P. Anstey. 

7. In Prison and Out, by Hesba Stretton. 

8. A Broken Heart, by author of Dora Thorne. 

9. A False Vow, by author of Dora Thorne. 

10. Kancy Hartshorn at Chautauqua, by Nancy Harts- 

11. Beaton’s Bargain, by Mrs. Alexander. [horn, 

12. Mrs. Hopkins on her Travels, by Mrs. Hopkins. 

13. A Guilty River, by Wilkie Collins. 

14. By Womiin’s Wit, by Mrs. Alexander. 

15. “ She,” by H. Rider Haggard. 

16. The Witch’s Head, by H. Rider Haggard. 

y. King Solomon’s Mines, by H. Rider Haggard. 

18. “Jess,” by H. Rider Haggard. 

19. The Merry Men, by R. L. Stevenson. 

20. Miss Jones’ Quilting, by Josiah Allen’s Wife. 

21. Secrets of Success, by J. W. Donovan. 

22. Drops of Blood, by Lily Curry. 

23. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

24. Dawn, by H. Rider Haggard. 

25. “Me.” A companion to “ She.” 

26. East Lynne, by Mrs. Henry Wood. 

27. Allan Quatermain, by H. Rider Haggard. 

28. Brother against Brother, by John R. Musick. 

29. A Modern Circe, by the Duchess. 

30. As in a Looking- Glass, by F. C. Philips. 

31. Paradise Almost Lost, by D. B. Shaw. 

32. The Duchess, by The Duchess. 

33. In Thraldom, by Leon Mead. 

34. The Bad Boy and His Sister, by Benjamin Broadaxe 

35. A Tale of Three Lions, by H. Rider Haggard. 

36. History of United States, by Emery E. Childs. 

37. Mona’s Choice, by Mrs. Alexander. 

38. One Traveler Returns, by David Christie Murray. 


PREFACE. 


f 

With the exception of the first story — “ Luck and Love” — all 
that follow in this book are actual and accurate reports, taken 
from official records and reprinted from The World, of cases that 
have recently come before the courts. They are brought to- 
gether as a study in marriage and divorce from real life, whicli 
cannot fail to interest and instruct if it does not amuse the 
student of social morality in these latter days. They reveal a 
degradation viler and a morality more beastly than has ever be- 
fore entered the mind of civilized man. The infamy of Sodom and 
the immorality of Babylon was that of individuals. The infamy 
of New York and the immorality of Brooklyn is not of individ- 
uals, but of the LAW. In the fonner cities the law was defied ; 
in the latter cities the law is obeyed. Lust and licentiousness, 
crowned by our Legislature, control our courts and are held up 
by our judges as the highest embodiment of right acting and 
right living. Never before, even among savages, could a woman 
be compelled to live with two or more husbands as she is now 
compelled by the laws of New York. Even in Sodom concubin- 
age was not placed by the law above wedlock and two years of 
a girl’s life reserved especially for it, as the law of Massachusetts 
now provides and the law of New York did provide up to a year 
ago. 

The facts are submitted without comment or opinion. Mine 
is not flattering to that overwhelming public clamor which 
forced the Legislature of New York to make polygamy and polyg- 
amy not only lawful, but compulsory within this State, yet it 
is merely that of an individual in a hopeless minority and has no 
value. 'The Author. 


'll 


[i 


/ 




LUCK AND LOVE.* 


BY THOMAS KOQAR WILLSON. 


CHAPTEK I. 

A MORTGAGE THAT WAS CANCELLED. 

OSIAH has saved your life twice, my dear, 
and he has a mortgage on you.” 



know it,” the younger woman replies ; 
‘‘and when he insists upon foreclosing I 
suppose I must submit. There’s no way of pay- 
ing it off. But I sometimes wish the. tram had run 
over me, or that I had gone under the ice. It 
seems very hard, because he helped me over a 
trestle ten years ago, and pulled me out of an air- 
hole on a skating pond last winter, that I should be 
expected to marry him and work my fingers to the 
bone without ever having a cent to call my own. ” 
Her aunt looks kindly at her. The district school 
teacher makes a picture well worth looking at as 
she draws the straggling branches of the untrimmed 
wisteria around her. Slender, with finely cut 
features, and dark brown eyes that can control an 


♦ Copyrighted by Daughters of America, 1887. 


6 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


unruly boy as no fear of the rod ever will, there is 
an expression of power in her gentle face, a self- 
possession and dignity, due, perhaps, to her four 
years of control over the. school children of Tipton 
township. 

‘‘Wives are expected to help their husbands, 
Mary. It is the common lot.” 

“ Yes ; I should be willing to help. But point out 
to me a wife in all Tipton who is anything but a 
servant without salary. Men marry women because 
it is cheaper than to hire them. They may love 
them, but it is before they many them, not after. 
They do not treat their cattle as they treat their 
wives. Josiah’s father is well off — worth $30,000, he 
said when he went on Nelson Tooker’s bond — but he 
killed his wife with overwork, refusing to allow her 
any help and compelling her to do the washing for 
nine grown-up persons the very day she died. 
Deacon Tooker has buried three wives, all killed by 
overwork. Nelson Tooker’s wife is dying of con- 
sumption, but he fills the house with summer 
boarders, and tells her she must get up at 3 o’clock 
if she can’t get through her work when she gets up 
at 4. Theirs was a love match, three years ago, if 
ever there was one. These are not exceptions. 
Every house in the country is the same. A wife is 
a slave, or at least a bondwoman.” 

“ But they do not complain. They are contented, 
Mary, and you would be.” 

The other smiled. 

“ They are resigned. Like the dying man of the 
story, they have to be.” 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


7 


But you will have to many some one, and Josiah 
is the best you can hope for.” 

I don’t see why I should marry any one. I earn 
my hving, and have $10 per month over to spend or 
save, and I work for only one person — myself. If 1 
marry, I have a possible choice between Deacon 
Tooker and Josiah. I may hve here until I am forty 
years old without ever meeting any other man I 
could possibly marry. It is no wonder that city men 
are as careful of their wives as you are of your great- 
grandmother’s china tea-set ; that instead of working 
their wives to death, they work themselves to death 
trying to get enough money to dress them and to 
pay for servants. A woman in the city will meet 
hundreds of men, and can wait until one comes 
along Vv'hose life chords with her own. Here it is 
Hobson’s choice — this man or none.” 

The light, jesting tone showed no feeling of 
petulance, and no vague unrest.” It was an 
every-day statement of fact, as if she had been 
explaining how to make angel cake. 

Her aunt looks fixedly through the vines to the 
other side of the road, where a young man lies resid- 
ing in a hammock. 

‘‘Haven’t you had these thoughts come to you 
recently, dear?” 

Mary’s eyes follow her aunt’s, but she replies 
without embarrassment and with a light laugh : 

“ Not at all, auntie. It is from what I see of the 
summer boarders, who are all married men, and 
from what Mrs. Gilpin told me two years ago.” 

“Mr. Smith is not married.” 


8 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


‘‘We do not know. He may have three or four 
wives. He lives in New York, where a man may 
lawfully have as many as he can support. That 
may be the reason why he is in such poor health 
and so very quiet. They may have sent him here to 
recruit.” 

Her aunt’s face shows relief as she replies, con- 
fidently : 

“Do you know I think he must be a bad man. 
He says such wicked things. Yesterday when 
Susie asked him to go to church, he said he was an 
agnostic, and Mr. Peters told Mr. Blunt that he was 
a free-trader.” 

Mary laughs outright. 

“That is terrible, isn’t it?” she asks mischiev- 
ously. “Agnostic means ‘one who don’t know,’ 
a class to which all my scholars belong, and a 
free-trader is what all our ancestors were when 
they fought in 1812 a war for ‘Free Trade and 
Sailors’ Rights’ against the European and English 
idea of protection. He is simply laughing in his 
sleeve, amit, at our rustic ignorance and supersti- 
tion.” 

Mrs. Barker was not listening. No one ever 
listens when there is a chance that by so doing a 
prejudice may be removed. 

“Talk of Josiah — and here he comes,” she 
ejaculated. 

A smile rippled over Mary’s face, but it was not 
meant, although it was taken, as a welcome by the 
strong and self-reliant man who came up the short 
walk. 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


9 


J osiah Hunter, postmaster of Tipton, owner of the 
largest store and best cultivated farm in the neigh- 
borhood, was a stalwart, broad-shouldered man 
of about thirty. His clean-shaven, good-humored 
face had not settled into the tired and dogged look 
that comes from keeping the sun’s hours. The red 
still discernible in his cheeks showed that his diges- 
tion had not yet been ruined by pork and pancakes, 
and only a yellowish tinge on the sun-browned flesh 
behind his cheek bones betrayed the fact that the 
insidious demon of the coffee-pot had begun to nib- 
ble upon his liver. It was plain to see that his 
stomach was not lil?:ely to influence him in any way 
to wrong-doing, and that the narrow way for him had 
a board walk on either side, with good macadam in 
the middle. There had not been a girl, except Mary 
Rose, within twenty miles of Tipton during the past 
seven years, who would not have said ‘‘yes ” without 
hesitation had he asked her to marry him. That he 
was unmarried showed he had never “popped” to 
any one except, perhaps, the one on whom he had a 
mortgage. 

The greetings over, Josiah explained that his morn- 
ing call was not one of mere ceremony, but purely 
on business. 

“You heard that your great-uncle Silas died last 
month. Did you know he died without making a 
wiU?” 

“He was old enough to make many,” Mary 
answers. “But I am not particularly interested in 
Uncle Silas. I told him many years ago that I hated 
him, and I have never changed my opinion.” - 


10 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


‘‘You ought to be interested,” Josiah replies. 
Had your grandfather any brothers or sisters 

“ There was only Uncle Silas.” 

How many children did your grandfather have . 

Uncle Dick and father. There were only two 
boys for three generations. Is there any chance 
that I may have a little share in my great-uncle’s 
fortune ? ” 

Josiah smiled. 

How many children did your Uncle Dick have ? 
‘‘He had none, ke was killed on his way to 
church, on his wedding day.” 

‘‘How many children did your father have? He 
was twice married, was he not ?” 

“ Yes.” Her face is quite sober now. I am the 

only child.” 

“If you are, you inherit all. But there is a claim- 
ant who says she is a daughter of your father by his 
first marriage. She claims all, not half ; and her 
lawyer was down here yesterday making inquiiies. 

I found him copying the inscription on her mother’s 
tombstone. When I told him that your father had 
a second wife, he laughed and asked me if I thought 
the second marriage could he proved. Can you tell 
me what he meant ? ” 

“ My sister married Charles Rose in Odessa, on the 
Black Sea,” replies Mrs. Barker. “ iJly father was a 
missionary to Turkey. Mary met him while she was 
home visiting her grandmother, and Charlie was the 
mate of the bark Black Eagle, of Sag Harbor. They 
corresponded after she went hack to father, and 
when Charlie brought a cargo of flour to Odessa, we 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


11 


all took a trip up there and she was married and 
came back in Charlie’s ship. You have the two 
certificates, Mary ; the one in English, that father 
made out, and the one in Russian with the French 
translation — for there were two ceremonies. Get 
them, child. There will be- no difficulty in proving 
the marriage.” 

Mary returns in a minute. 

‘‘Here they are, Josiah ; both certifying that 
mother and father were married May 18, 1863.” 

Josiah takes them with a troubled face. 

“ Are you sure of the date ?” he says unsteadily. 

“Why, yes! Both of them agree. I can’t read 
Russian, but I can read French.” 

Josiah says nothing. The two women look 
worhderingly at him. 

“What is the matter?” Mrs. Barker asks rather 
tartly. 

“Do you know anything about your brother’s 
first wife ?” he answers. 

“Yes. She was a Loper, from Ridgeville ; one of 
seven sisters. Two years after they were married she 
went to Buffalo, and when he came back he heard she 
was dead. He married Mary six or seven years after. 
Laura was not dead, but she died here, at his mother’s 
house, soon after he sailed to marry my sister.” 

“Do you know the date ? ” 

“It is on the tombstone. What do you mean, 
Josiah Hunter ? Don’t beat around the bush.” 

“The tombstone says she died May 22, 1863.” 

The girl’s face pales, and she draws herself up as 
if to meet a blow. 


; 12 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


Then the marriage was not legal 
She says it with an effort ; but it is of her mother 
she is thinking— not of the fortune. 

‘‘ Yes, it was legal,” Josiah answers, resolutely. 
‘‘You are mistaken in the date. Give me those 
papers for a day or two and you will find, when you 
get them back, that your parents were married on 
the 28 th, not the 18 th.” 



THE TWO WOMEN LOOKED AT HIM WONDERINGLY. 

Mary rises and looks down into his eyes with a 
strange fire in her own that he has never seen be- 
fore. A minute passes and she does not speak. 

“It is perfectly right,” he says unsteadily, as his 
cheeks fiush and his eyes sink. “You are his 
daughter and it properly belongs to you. No one 
will question the date. There will not be a siispicion. 
They think you cannot prove a marriage that took 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


13 


place on the other side of the globe. But these prove 
it — when the date is changed.” 

And your price, Josiah ? ” 

She is still looking at him, and her low voice is 
cold and hard, without emotion. 

I have no price. I shall expect you to marry 
me at once, of course.” 

She takes the papers from his hand, folds them up 
and puts them in her pocket. 

‘‘And if I refuse to be a party to this fraud ? ” 

“You cannot be such a fool. It is no fraud. Do 
you know that there, is over a million dollars m- 
volved ? ” 

“ I do refuse. I will never surrender these papers 
to any one, but burn them first. I am an honest 
woman now, and I will die one. AU the money in 
the city of New York cannot tempt me to consent to 
forgery.” 

“ That is nonsense. You must. You shall. Af- 
ter waiting all these years, knowing you would m- 
herit this property some time or other, such a trifle 
as this shall not stand in the way.” 

fler eyes are now blazing with scorn. Her slen- 
der figure is erect and defiant. 

“ Not one penny of my uncle’s money shall come to 
me unless I am entitled to it, honestly, and without 
question.” 

“Then you won’t get a cent, and you may go 
- the ” 

Even in his anger he remembers that he is a 
candidate for the vacant deaconship, and checks 
himself. 


14 


LUCK AND LOVE!. 


•‘Aunt Barker, try to get a little sense into that 
fool’s head,” he says, rudely, “and let me know 
when you do.” 

Mary watches his angry stride, the heels digging 
into the gravel, with clinched hands and rapid 
breathing. As the gate slams she turns to her aunt 
and says, laconically : 

“That mortgage is cancelled.” 




V 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


15 


CHAPTER IT. 

PLOTTING AND COUNTER- PLOTTING. 



^ ARY’S reply to her aunt’s question con- 
cerning their neighbor’s boarder, John 
Smith, had been, to say the least, dis- 
ingenuous. But if she had deceived her 
aunt she had also deceived herself. Some women 
are like the ostrich ; others like the man who refused 
to look through Galileo’s telescope at Venus. Mary 
belonged to the latter class. She had resolutely 
shut her eyes to the influence that had been exerted 
upon her thoughts and feelings by this gentle, pale- 
faced young man, whom she had first met two years 
before when he had accompanied his sister to this 
quiet village for a month’s rest. A strong friend- 
ship had sprung up between the two women, and 
this had brought Mary into companionship with the 
brother. From the first meeting she felt at once 
upon the same terms of intellectual equality that he 
would have given to any man. There was always 
the same quiet deference in his manner to her that 
there would have been had he been talking to a man 
whose wisdom had been approved by his fellows— a 
deference due to her brains, not to her petticoats. 
He assumed without saying it, that she belonged to 
that class in which all are equals, with equal rights 
and privileges, and in which the highest law is that 


10 


LUCK ANt) LOVE. 


this equality is to be sacredly observed— a class which 
has no distinction of age, sex, or previous condition 
of servitude. To one who had revolted for years 
from the law that women must keep silent in 
meeting,” that women had a sphere” out of which 
they might not depart — the sphere being limited, so 
far as she could see, to washing dishes, darning 
clothing, and nursing babies— such an appreciation 
was as refreshing as a cool wind on a July day. 
Had it been assumed, it would have amused her. 
But it was as natmal to Smith as the air he 
breathed. It was the way in which he regarded all 
women — or aU who permitted themselves to be so 
regarded. He had been so brought up from infancy. 
His mother and his sisters in his home were on a 
perfect equality with his father and himself — as the 
mother and father are in every properly regulated 
home. That any consideration should be shown the 
father that under the same circumstances would not 
be shown the mother, was impossible. He did not 
know that his manner was different from that of 
others — and this was its charm. 

But more, perhaps, than this, in its effect upon 
her mind, was the absence from his conversation of 
prejudice of any kind and of aU malice and unchari- 
tableness. He had learned how to think, and a word 
from him would always be the key to a dispute. 
He looked at questions from all sides, and through 
all his talk— when he did talk, which was not 
often— there was a vein of kindly cynicism that was 
abhorrent to narrow-minded, one-eyed men and 
women, but fascinating to her. It was this that 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


17 


made him far more attractive than the city men v^ho 
had wives, for these men were usually in subjection 
—though they usually were not aware of it— and 
took their ideas second-hand. 

When Mrs. Gilpin wrote that she intended going 
with her husband on a trip up the lakes, but that 
Jack, who had broken down from overwork on the 
night-desk of The World, had been ordered to take 
two months’ absolute rest out of reach of daily 
papers, and would spend it at Tipton, Mary was 
conscious of a glow she had never felt before. 
Absent, he had seldom been out of her thoughts. 
Chance words were always reminding her of some 
quaint speech or comment or expression that brought 
his face before her ; but she was not aware that she 
cared more for him than for any other pleasant 
acquaintance. 

With Smith it was different. He knew he was in 
love with her ; but, being naturally silent, and not 
carrying his heart on his sleeve, he was the only one 
who did know it. He had understood from his sister 
that Mary was to marry Josiah, and he had heard 
the latter say she was to be his wife. Never had a 
word of compliment to her crossed his lips. He 
belonged to a class who considered it as reprehensible 
to steal sweethearts as to steal pocketbooks, and to 
his benighted moral sense it did not matter whether 
a thing wrong in itself was or was not permitted by 
law or custom. Without law there is no sin,” . 
■\vas a doctrine he did not accept. 

Knowing that she was not yet married, he had 
elected to spend his vacation at Tipton, simply that 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


he might see her now and then. His love was net a 
passion, but an enduring affection ; and while he 
often doubted its lasting power in the years to come 
with her married to Josiah, as a barrier to some 
distant future marriage, he knew that if not 
deliberately destroyed it would make the crown of 
his life. He knew that it would do him good to 
have loved her— even though he lost her. His mind 
was healthy, not morbid. 

The vicious slam that Josiah had given the gate 
made Smith lift his eyebrows, and he watched 
Josiah’ s impatient strides with some amusement, 
whisthng “ The Owl ” under his breath. 

That evening Smith called on Mary. It was the 
first time he had ever gone alone to her door, and 
there was an odd sensation in his throat that was 
new to him. She was sitting on the veranda, and 
he caught a little blush on her face ; but the welcome 
was free from embarrassment. 

“I knew you were alone, for I saw your aunt 
going to meeting, and I came over to tell you a bit 
of news in advance of publication. Mrs. Peters is 
going to elope to-night with old man Flinders — the 
one who has seven children. ” 

Are you serious or jesting ? ” 

‘‘Perfectly serious. She has her trunk packed 
and hidden in the haymow at the head of the lane. 
He is coming for her in a buggy at 3 o’clock in the 
morning. Th^y will drive to Swinton and catch the 
5 A.M. express to New York.” 

“ I don’t understand it. She doesn’t love him. 
Why should she P’ 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


19 


That’s what I asked her. It seems the second 
Mrs. Flinders was a sweetheart of her husband, in 
the long ago, and for several months past they have 
remembered that, but forgotten each is now married. 
Mrs. Peters found it out, told Flinders, and he, 
instead of getting mad, proposed that she should 
take a trip to New York with him, to which she 
consented.” 

‘^Did you not try to dissuade her ? You could cer- 
tainly prevent it. Why don’t you? It is moral 
suicide.” 

*‘I offered to get her a* divorce without Peters’ 
knowledge, and to arrange matters so that she 
might lawfully marry Flinders secretly, to avoid all 
wrongdoing ; but she would not listen. ‘ Marry 
him ? ’ quoth she. ^ Not I. A month of him would 
be more than enough for a lifetime.’ Then I ap- 
pealed to her for my sake to postpone the flitting 
until I could get another boarding-house, but she 
said she wouldn’t sta:y another day with Peters, 
even to oblige me. Seriously, she is insane with 
jealousy.” 

Can nothing be done ? ” 

^‘‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Did the Lord 
answer Cain’s question ? Cain had the best of 
that celebrated conversation, you will remember. 
Besides, do you think I can spoil a half column 
‘ beat ’ for The World ? I have it all written up, 
from the inside bottom facts, so to apeak, and will 
mail it on the train at 8 a.m. It is not often a 
night-editor has the chance of sending in copy to be 


20 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


blue-pencilled by a rival. I want to see if a word 
can be changed in my letter.’’ 

‘‘Now I know you are no.t serious. You have a 
plan to save her, and I can help you in some way.” 

“How do you know ?” he asks, quickly, and off 
his guard. 

“Because,” she says, slowly, “sometimes I can 
— feel and know — what you are thinking ab(jut — 
and it is never what you are saying.” She seems 
forced to say it, and the blush deepens on her 
cheek. 

She is sitting in a rocker; he on the upper step. 
He bends his head and softly and reverently kisses 
her hand. A thrill passes through her at the touch 
of his lips that awakens vague consciousness of 
something new and very sweet in her life. She 
does not move her hand for a moment, and neither 
speaks. Then she comes back to earth with a little 
sigh. 

“You would not tell me if you did not need my 
help,” she says gently. 

“No,” he replies. “Only us four have any 
suspicion of the plot. Let me hold your hand for 
a moment while I concentrate my mind on what I 
want you to help me get. Close your eyes.” 
Really it is only a ruse to get her hand, .but she is 
unconscious of it. 

“I cannot think,” she says after a moment or 
two. “ It seems hke rags and a box.” 

“You are right, my — mind reader.” He catches 
himself only in time. “I want some old, worn-out 
clothes, and an old black trunk. And I want to 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


21 


borrow a shawl or wrap. I also want you to get 
Mrs. Peters in here about nine o’clock and give us 
all coffee ; but pour out hers in a cup which has this 
powder in it. It will make her sleep like a log. 
Otherwise she will sit and wait for him. That 
would spoil all. Peters has gone to Little Falls, and 
will be back at nine o’clock to-mofrow morning. 
Flinders is supposed to be at his father’s to spend 
the'*night. ^ Have you coUared on my little game,’ 
as Josiah says ? ” 

She looks in his face for a moment. Then laughs 
joyously. 

^^Do you really mean it? What fun! What a 
joke on Flinders ! But can you carry it out ? ” 

have shaved my small mustache, as perhaps 
you may see when the light falls directly on my 
face, I have a dress, bonnet, veil, a roll of cotton 
batting — everything but a wrap. She is tall and 
slender and there’s not much difference in our 
heights. Besides, it will be dark. I want to get 
her trunk back in the house and a dummy in place 
of it. I propose to punish Flinders and save Mrs. 
Peters from scandal. Give her time to think, and 
this will all blow over. I can cure Peters of his 
infatuation in a week. Mrs. Flinders is the homeli- 
est woman in the -county, and Mrs. Peters one of 
the prettiest.” 

can give you what you want. Can I not do 
something else ?” 

^Hf you could go over about 5 a.m. and wake her 
up — borrow some peppermint or something to make 
some excuse — so that you can teU people incident- 


22 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


ally that she was home at that hour, I wish you 
would.” 

‘‘I will. You must tell me how it comes out.” 

‘‘Certainly; ait the picnic to-morrow. I will be 
back in time. You may exercise your discretion 
about telling Mrs. Peters, to-morrow morning, 
what I have done and where I am.” 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


2 ; 


CHAPTER III 


FOOLS DIE FOR WANT OF WISDOM. 

Klfr_HEN Smith and Mr. and Mrs. Peters 
appeared on the picnic grounds in the 
afternoon, Mary was one of the first to 
greet them. 

‘‘ Have you heard the news ? ” she asked, in a 
voice audible to all the persons in the group. Mr. 
Flinders has eloped with some woman, nobody knows 
who, and left his wife and seven children. He sent 
a letter to his wife, saying he Was going to New 
York with a woman prettier than she was ; and the 
station-master at Swinton saw him go on the train 
with a strange woman. He drove over in Joshua’s 
buggy, early in the morning.” 

Mrs. Peters tried to keep from hysterical laughter, 
as she asked if there was any suspicion as to who 
the woman was. 

‘^Not in the least,” answered Joshua ; but the 
station-master said he thought she looked like the 
girl from Bainbridge who has been working for his 
mother. It’s nobody around here.” 

Mrs. Peters, who still had her hand on Smith’s 
arm, pressed it convulsively. He turned his sober, 
commiserating face just in time to keep her from 
breaking into half -hysterical laughter. 


24 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


It must be very sad,” he said. How does Mrs. 
Flinders take it ? ” 

‘‘She’s as mad as a hatter,” replied a manied 
vmman sitting on the ground, “and declares she 
will tear .the woman’s eyes out. I think she would 
have been glad enough if he hadn’t said the woman 
was prettier than she. That was more than any 
woman could stand.” 

“ It was, indeed, adding insult to injury. Do you 
think it could be true ? ” 

Smith’s innocent question was received with roars 
of laughter which enabled Mary and Mrs. Peters to 
give way to their mirth. 

“The station-master says she was a very hand- 
some woman, with red cheeks and bold, black eyes. 
She looked like a wicked woman, who would lead a 
man astray, he said. He saw her face when she 
took a drink of water, and she winked at him ; and 
as she was getting on the train she, lifted her skirt 
and shook her foot at him. I had arranged to go 
over to Swinton to get my buggy, for Flinders told 
me he was going to New York this morning ; but I 
heard the news before I started. I’d give a good 
deal to know who she was.” 

Joshua’s strong passion was curiosity. 

“ Flinders will soon be back. Then we can ask 
him,” said Smith. “I would like to hear his ex- 
perience.” 

“It won’t do you any good, I’m thinking,” said 
the married woman sagely. “The chances are you 
will have your own experience to profit by before 
any of us sees him.” 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


25 


Her pointed glance at Mrs. Peters had nothing in 
it but good-natured raillery ; but Mary felt a sudden 
chill and her face slowly paled at the thought. 

‘ ^ Don’t be spiteful, Sally, because I got him first,” 
Mrs. Peters retorted. ^^My eyes are not' black — 
and yours are. When you want him, wink— or 
shake your foot. He’ll come to you.” 

I think Peters ought to keep a more careful 
watch over his wife,” remarked Joshua, as the three 
started away, leaving Peters talking politics with a 
crony. The next thing we hear will be that she 
and Smith have levanted.” 

‘^Bah !” said the married woman scornfully. The 
next thing you hear, Joshua, will surprise you more 
than that.” 

And it did. 

‘‘Now tell us the details of ypiu* adventure,” said 
Mrs. Peters, when the three at last found themselves 
alone. “I haven’t asked him any questions because 
I felt you ought ‘to have the story first, Mary — and 
because my husband has not given me a chance,” 
she added. “ The last is the tj?ue reason, but begin 
at the beginning.” 

“There’s not much of a story. I put myself into 
your brown dress, letting out the tuck, and an old 
pair of your corsets, using your roll of cotton batting 
to make the figure. I wafe quite proud of the latter 
when I was ready. My veil was heavy, and I felt 
perfectly confident. I waited for him under the 
trees at the gate. He came along about 3.10. I 
kept in the shadow, knowing he would want to kiss 
me — I mean you. He did, but I kept in darkness 


26 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


under the trees when I raised my veil. Keally, he 
does not know how to kiss. It would have disgust- 
ed you. 

‘‘ ‘ Feel how my heart beats,’ I said. That was so 
he might have no suspicion that I was not a woman. 
‘Yes,’ he replied,' ‘it does go pitter, patter, now, 
dearie, but you must be brave.’ ‘ Suppose we should 
meet any one who knows me,’ I said. ‘Keep your 
veil down and they won’t know you,’ he advised. 
That was what I wanted, as I did not care how 
much he hugged me. Nothing in that way was 
lacking. As you will never know how much you 
missed, you will never regret it ; but if he had been 
Areas himself he couldn’t have done better. I never 
knew before how much might be left to the imagi- 
nation — and cotton. When we got to the station, 
and he went to put the horse in the shed, I saw the 
station-master poking around, so I raised my veil to 
get a drink and let him have a good look. I wanted 
him to swear to the woman. My cheeks and eye- 
brows were painted heavily, and my face was well 
made up with grease-paint. 

“ On the train Flinders sat beside me whispering 
nonsense. Of course I kept my veil down. Just be- 
fore we got to the bridge where the train slows up 
I asked him to find the train-boy and get me some 
candy. When he left me I went into the last car. 
It was a sleeper, and I passed out on the rear plat- 
form and swung m3^self off without danger of any 
one seeing me. Then I scuttled into the woods, took 
off the skirts and corsets, rolled down my trousers, 
put on my coat and hat which I had in my hand- 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


27 


bag, walked to the next station and took the way- 
train for home, the one Peters was on. The corset 
and bonnet I threw into a pond, sinking them 
with stones. What Flinders thought when he went 
back and could not find me on the train you may 
imagine. He must have searched the train through 
and through.” 

Mrs. Peters smiled a little sadly. Her hysterical 
spirits had been succeeded by melancholy. 

‘‘I know and appreciate from what you have 
saved me,” she said presently. ‘^Nothing but the 
drug could have stopped me from going — not even 
my husband. I would have gone in spite of him. 
But I had such a dream ! I thought I had gone. 
When Mary woke me up I thanked heaven I was 
still in my own house ; but I have only you to thank, 
and Mary. I shall love you all my life, and any 
sacrifice I can make, any favor I can grant, will be 
given gladly, not grudgingly. Will you remem- 
ber ” 

She is holding his hand in both of hers, her eyes 
fu ll of tears, her voice vibrating with intense feeling. 
A pain sharp as a knife passes through Mary and 
she turns away her head. There is a sense of suffo- 
cation in her throat, and she knows now that she 
loves this man intensely, passionately — as she feels, 
hopelessly. She can hardly restrain herself from 
dragging his hand away. But she must, and she 
does. We can do anything we must do. She rises 
to go away. There is no reason why the pain she is 
feeling should be increased. 

^^My dear Mrs. Peters, you must think nothing of 


28 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


the kind. I have done nothing except play a joke 
on Flinders, with your kind help and assistance, be- 
cause your husband might have got into a fight with 
him if you had told him before. As soon as you 
feel all right we must let Peters into the secret. 
Flinders came to you, lying about your husband 
and Mrs. Fhnders, and proposing to take you to New 
York. You dress me up and send me in your place. 
Grand joke ! Shall we go back to the tables, Mary ? 

There is a caress in the question, and it is the first 
time he has ever called her by her Christian name, 
but both increase her pain. 

She cannot answer. She gives an impatient mo- 
tion with her hands as she turns. 

^ ^ I forgot J osiah, ’ ’ he says, gently ; ‘ ^ forgive me. ” 

“ Josiah is nothing to me,” she says, proudly and 
with emphasis. 

He takes her hand, which she tries to withdraw. 

‘‘You two stay here while I see if Charlie has 
gone for the cream,” Mrs. Peters says quickly, 
understanding intuitively the situation and Mary’s 
jealousy. 

“ Don’t go fora moment,” she says firmly, laying 
her hand on the girl’s arm. Then she springs down 
the bank and runs towards the plateau. Mary, sur- 
prised, remains, perforce. 

“ Is it true ?” he asks, his voice trembling. “Are 
you free ? Are you not engaged to him ?” 

She answers the last question only. “I never 
have been.” Her words are cold, but she feels her- 
self trembling and pulls herself together with a 
strong effort. 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


29 


“ And for two years my heart has been eaten up 
for love of you,” he says, with a passionate bitter- 
ness that is still gentle, “because I thought it dis- 
honorable in me to woo one pledged to another. I 
have put a guard on my every action lest you 
should discover my secret and scorn my weakness. 
Blind, credulous fool that I was ! Tell me, my 
darling, tell me,’’ he pleaded, “ am I too late to have 
any hope ? Has my chance gone, never to return, 
to win you for my wife ? I have loved you so long, 
so faithfully, so truly, that your own heart should 
plead for me. Can you not give me any hope ? I 
came here this summer to see you for the last time, 
as I thought, before your marriage, and to carry 
back with me the last remembrance of my lost love. 
I know I am unwise in startling you so suddenly, but 
bear with me for my love’s sake. It has come upon 
me so unexpectedly that I must speak. I cannot 
wait. I only ask an equal chance with any other to 
win you for my wife. Give me that, and I will con- 
quer the rest. Will you, my darling, my sweet- 
heart ?” 

She stood motionless while he was speaking, her 
downcast face hiding its emotion. Never before, 
never again in her life will his words or any man’s 
words fill her with such happiness. She knows them 
to be sincere and true. But the revulsion is too jnuch 
for her overwrought nerves. The discovery of her 
own love had surprised her, and every nerve was 
braced to conceal her secret. He waits, but she can- 
not answer. Suddenly she turns her head against 


so 


LUCK AND LOVB). 


the tree, and her tears fall like rain, with now and 
then a slight sob. 

Smith’s heart sinks, but 'he lays his arm very 
lightly and caressingly on her waist. 

“Do not grieve, my darling; do not grieve for 
me,” he says, with infinite tenderness. “It is not 



SHE TURNS AND LEANS HER FOREHEAD ON HIS SHOULDER. 

your fault, but mine, that I have not won your 
heart, and may not win it. I shall love you all my 
life no less, and my love 'will still be a joy, not a 
sorrow. Shall I— shall I leave you for a little 
while ?” he asked, after a pause: 

They are very close together. She turns and leans 


LUCK AND LOVE. 31 

her forehead on his shoulder, her hand clasping the 
opposite arm. 

‘‘Do not go,” she whispers, brokenly. 

His arm around her waist holds her prmly. But 
he is not yet confident. He has hope at last, how- 
ever, and he waits. Soon she looks up, smiling 
through tears. 

“I do not know what I am crying for,” she says, 
shamefacedly. 

“I know what I am crying for,” he says ; “it is 
from joy.” Both his arms are around her, and he 
knows she is all his own. 

She looks up at his eyes full of happy tears and 
lovelight. 

“I think that is my reason, too,” she whispers, 
shyly. 

Two hours after, when they rejoin the party^ Mrs. 
Peters motions Smith over to where she is sitting, 
“taking in,” as she calls it, a desperate flirtation 
between Josiah and the married woman, which is in- 
tended on his part for Mary’s benefit. He knows 
that single women are a thousand times more jealous 
of their married than of their unmarried friends. 

“Well,” Mrs. Peters says, “was I not good? 
Didn’t I do just the right thing at the right time ? ” 

“You are an angel,” he replies enthusiastically. 
“I can hardly restrain from kissing you before 
everybody.” 

“There’s just one too many here for it to be safe,” 
she replies with a laugh. 

Josiah glances across at Charlie Peters, and then 
looks triumphantly at his companion. 


32 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


‘‘What did I tell you he whispers. 

“Bah ! ” she replies, with a grimace at his stupidity. 
“His kissing is vicarious. The one too many is 
Mary Rose, not Charlie Peters. Can’t you see that 
they have been spooning and have been engaged for 
just one hour ? He wants to kiss Susan for making 
the time and opportunity. I wish I had been the one 
to do it.” 

“ The devil ! ” exclaims Josiah. Even the deacon- 
ship ahead is not sufficient to keep back the ex- 
clamation of the natural man. 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


33 


CHAPTER IV. 

AND THE FOOLISH SHALL BE SERVANT TO THE WISE 
OF HEART. 

^pj||iyHAT night Josiah had along consultation with 
^l| ^ himself. He had believed that he was alone 
1 1 in the field ; that it was aut Josias, aut niillus ; 

^ and he had ‘ ‘ put on the screws, ” as he had re- 

marked to his mother, without a thought of outside 
interference. 

For nearly ten years he had had in his mind the 
idea he could secure through Mary the wealth that 
Silas Rose would leave behind him when he died. 
Silas had once told Josiah’ s father that only fools 
made wills for. the lawyers to fight over, and that 
what he had saved should go to his heirs-at-law — 
he didn’t care a jackass cent who they were — with- 
out three-fourths of it going to the vultures who 
hung about the courts. Josiah knew that the girl 
then attending the village school was the grandniece 
of Silas, and a little detective work, unsuspected by 
any one, had revealed to him that she was the only 
heir-at-law, known or probable. 

For -the past five years he had regarded Silas 
Rose’s money as his own. He had dreamed about it 
— sleeping and waking. He had planned what he 
would do with it — and he had it all invested, in 
anticipation. He intended that it should take him 


34 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


to the Legislature, to Congress, and — who could tell ? 
— perhaps to the White House. There was not a 
suspicion of it in any mind but his own, and he had 
driven off without difficulty every man who had ap- 
proached Mary with even friendly intentions. He 
had been so sure of her that he had beei^in no hurry 
to marry her. 

The announcement of the engagement, a piece of 
news which every one at the picnic took home, was 
a serious blow, and he realized fully that he had 
been over-confident. But there was not the slight- 
est intention on his part of giving up Mary or the 
money — they meant the same thing to him. His 
contempt for the slender, pale-faced city fellow ” 
was unbounded. He did not believe Mary cared for 
him, and was certain the engagement was a bit of 
feminine pique and a summer flirtation. He 
anticipated no trouble in driving Smith from the 
field, but his source of anxiety now was Mary. He 
cursed himself roundly for his blunder in letting her 
know that she might inherit ; in not marrying her 
immediately ; and in not changing the date without 
her knowledge. If Mary were his wife, he believed 
he could get her to join with him in the fraud — 
perhaps not without great difficulty ; but he would 
make her, he said to himself. 

His first step was a reconcihation with Mary, 
and he called the next day to apologize for his lan- 
guage. Mary was too full of shy happiness to let 
him. 

I know you were thinking of my interests,” she 
said, kindly, ‘^and that you only said what any one 


LUCK AND LOVfi. 


35 


else would have said. I was not in the least vexed 
with you for saying it.” 

He misapprehended her entirely. She was thank- 
ful from the bottom of her heart that he had said it, 
because it had revealed to her that his sole anxiety 
was for the money and that he had long been 
anticipating obtaining it through her. 

There is no necessity for you to say a word con- 
cerning your mother’s marriage to anyone,” he says 
just before leaving . ‘ ‘ It can remain a secret known 

to us three. Some time you may be willing to let 
me correct the date and to take the fortune that is 
yours rightfully.” 

She shakes her head, with a smile ; but when he 
leaves she sits brooding for an hour or more, and 
when Jack finds her there are tears in her eyes. 
He kisses them away, but she shrinks a little from 
him. 

‘‘What is it, heart’s delight?” he asks. “Has 
Josiah been cutting up rusty ? Are your tears of 
pity for him ? Forget him now and rejoice with 
me.” His gentle words bring on an April shower. 

Suddenly she brushes the tears aside, leaves the 
room a moment and returns with the marriage 
certificate, which she hands him. He reads it with 
some curiosity, and then looks up at her. 

“My mother was the second wife,” she says 
bravely ; “ my father’s first wife died May 22.” 

He glances again at the date on the marriage 
certificate. 

“And he married again seven days after she died 
— ^in a foreign port*.” His face is full of sympathy 


3<5 


LUCK AND LOVE'. 


as lie asks. “Was there a love story in It, heart- 
ease ? Are you thinking of your mother ?” 

Her heart grows cold. Is he, too, as false as 
the other ? But no, he may not understand. 

“ My mother’s marriage was May 18,” she says 
slowly, with emphasis on the date. 

“May 29, you mean,” he corrects. “This 
certificate is dated by the Russian calendar, w^hich 
is eleven days behind our time. Great Scott ! ” he 
says incoherently, catching her to him and looking 
down into her face, “ it isn’t possible — you couldn’t 
have thought — it couldn’t be this ! ” 

“But it is this,” she whispers presently. “It is 
true ? ” 

“ Don’t you know and teach that the Russians use 
the old style and we use the new ? Oh, these women, 
these women ! ” with pathetic reproach, “ what they 
don’t know about the marriage law takes a hfetime 
to unlearn. Did you think that the legality of your 
mother’s marriage was affected, even if the dates 
were as you thought ? Your mother, then, would 
have been lawfully married ‘ by proclamation ’ May 
23. Not a doubt or cloud could possibly rest upon 
her marriage by such an accident as this ; but the 
marriage would date, of course, only from the death 
of the first wife. It would be what is known in law 
as a marriage by proclamation, as the ceremony 
would he invalid ; but a ceremony is not necessary, 
and as a matter of good morals all ceremonies should 
be forbidden and made misdemeanors. The law 
only permits them ; it should forbid them.” 

“Then this marriage was regular and lawful ?” 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


37 


Under any circumstances. But, as it took place 
a week after the first wife died, not even the sewing- 
circle could say anything against it. Now, my 
sweetheart, for this sound legal opinion I want, 
first, a refresher, then a remembrancer and then 
the fee. I have had the retainer,,” he adds, regret- 
fully. 

She hesitates. He waits. She looks up at last, 
and their eyes meet. Both smile, and then she 
kisses him shyly. 

^^Is it so very hard?” he asks. ‘^Aren’t you 
beginning to feel that I belong to you — that I am 
your tame cat ? It seems to me that you are just 
as much a part of me as my hand.” 

‘‘I don’t think — I don’t know why, but I have 
always felt a sense of rest with you, as if it were 
not necessary to speak for you to understand me. 
But, Jack, don’t you think I ought not to be so 
familiar ? ” * 

‘ ‘ Can you help it ? ” 

I haven’t tried — very hard. Perhaps I can.’’ 

He brings his lips close to hers. 

Now try as hard as you can.” 

His face slowly comes nearer. 'Half an inch 
intervenes, and then she lifts her own to his. 

I don’t want to help it.” 

Never, never kiss me, unless you wish to,” he 
says earnestly. Never accept a caress of any kind 
unless you wish to give or receive it. Never offer 
anything that is a matter of form, either by word or 
d 3ed. Y ou will have moods — and tenses, too — when 
even om: love will be secondary for the time. Don’t 


38 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


let me kiss you then ; don’t kiss me. Let heart 
speak to heart. Do you understand me ? ” 

She does, and the love that makes it more blessed 
to give than receive fills her with delight she had 
never expected to experience. 

Then she tells him of her father and mother — but 
never a word of Uncle Silas. 

The next day she has a consultation with Judge 
Green, lasting two hours. This she did not mention 
to any one. 

Josiah found it by no means so easy to ‘‘ handle” 
this rival. Peters had confided to every one the 
story of the elopement and induced Smith to hold a 
little reception as the mysterious woman, the station 
master being invited over to identify her, which he 
did instantly — even before Smith shook his foot at 
him. The story as given to the public was generally 
accepted without suspicion, but the women caught a 
faint inkling of the truth by their divine gifts of 
inspiration, and honored him, and the men voted 
him an honest and clever fellow. They looked only 
to the execution of the joke. The feelers Josiah 
threw out showed him that a quarrel would be 
unwise, and that disparagement of any kind would 
be worse. Smith had only a week of his vacation 
left, and when any one poked a little blunt fun at 
Josiah for getting the sack,” he replied, with a 
shrug of the shoulders and a hope that the dude was 
not fooling Mary Pose. If he was, if he didn’t come 
back and marry her, he would have to settle witlj 
Jiim, he said, with a scowl. 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


39 


CHAPTER V. 

THE THINGS UNWON, UNWON REMAIN. 

F our days before Smith’s vacation expired 
Josiah went to the city, remaining two 
days. When he came back he shadowed 
^ Smith up to the morning of his departure. 
About an hour after Smith’ left Peters’ house, 
and while he was still at the station, two telegrams 
arrived at the house for him ; but when Peters 
got to the station with them the train had gone, 
and the station agent informed him that a lady with 
a child had just been driven over to his house. 

Peters hurried back home, and found the visitors 
in the parlor, his wife and a gossipy neighbor listen- 
ing to the chatter of a strange woman. 

was just saying to your wife, Mr. Peters, that 
I never knew such a blunder. I telegraphed Jack 
yesterday that I was going to stop here to-day, and 
go home with him to-morrow or next day. Then I 
was carried past the station this morning on the ex- 
press and had to come back on the accommodation. 
And now I find my husband is gone, our trains pass- 
ing at the bridge, and that he didn’t get my dis- 
patches. Mrs. Peters says there is not another train 
south until 2.30.” 

^^Yes.” Peters understands faintly what his wife 
feeling, despatches after he had 


40 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


gone. I didn’t get to the depot in time.” He lays 
them down on the table. 

Mrs. Smith takes one up and tears it open. 

‘‘ This is not mine, but it is for me,” she remarks, 
laying it down and opening the other. Yes, this 
is the one I sent from Buffalo yesterday morning.” 

She hands it to Peters, who reads : 

‘‘Will stop for you Thursday morning. I want to 
meet and know the friends who have been so good 
to you. Nelly Smith.” 

“We are very sorry,” Peters says, “for the 
blunder. Please lay aside your things. We will 
try and make your stay as agreeable as possible, for 
Mr. Smith’s sake. We are all very fond of him.” 

“ Come up to my room,” Mrs. Peters says. “ You 
will want to brush your hair.”^ 

When she comes down alone, she looks at her 
husband. “ What do you think, Charlie ? ” 

“It’s pretty black for Smith,” he rephes. He 
picks up the first telegram and reads : 

“ Telegi’aph your wife must have her copy by Mom 
day night. Glad to hear your b(W is improving. 
Don’t be in a hurry to get back. Dunn can wony 
through while things are dull. J. G. Speed.” 

“That settles it, I am afraid,” he says, questiom 
ingty. 

“ Men are deceitful above all things and desper-r 
ately wicked,” she replies, meaningly; “but I will 
not believe it of him, without further evidence. I 
suppose Mrs. Town has gone to tell everybody.” 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


41 


‘^Yes. She went across to Miss Barker’s, Josiah 
was at the gate, and she stopped and told him, I 
suppose, for they were talking some time.” 

‘‘Josiah!” The name suggests something that 
causes a frown and a gleam in her eye that is fairly 
wicked. Mrs. Smith comes down stairs and begins 
to talk to her, and Mrs. Peters suggests a cup of tea, 
to which the other assents. 

“Keep a guard on your tongue,’* Mrs. Peters 
says to her husband. “ Do not drop a word to Mrs. 
Smith that will let her suspect we do not know 
Smith was married. Then she will give herself 
away.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“I don’t believe she ever saw Smith. You do 
what I say.” 

It is plain even to Peters that Mrs. Smith is get- 
ting uneasy long before the train time. She tries to 
draw them out about their neighbors, but they won’t 
be drawn. 

“My husband is a sad flirt,” she says at last, 
plainly desperate. “ From his letters he seemed to 
be mashed on a Miss Kose. Is she pretty ? I want- 
ed to see her.” 

Mrs. Peters looks at her steadily. “I don’t think 
you have cause to be jealous of anybody here ex- 
cept myself, and Mr. Smith would not flirt with 
me when he had the opportunity,” she says coolly. 
“You can very well imagine that under these cir- 
cumstances I did not permit him to flirt with any 
one else.” 

Mrs. Smith smiles, as she is in duty boxmd to do, 


42 


LUCK.#^ND LOVE. 


but Peters squirms uneasily and goes out to harness 
the horse. 

* * * * * * * * * 

‘‘I am not a love- sick fool,” Mary says, after a 
long talk. “ It may all be true, and if it should be 
true, it will be a very serious lesson for me. But I 
do not believe Mr. Smith to be that kind of a man. 
I have some common sense, and I shall not break off 
my engagement and keep this matter from him, to 
find out in after years that it was all a mistake.” 

‘^Suppose we telegraph to Mr. Speed, the manag- 
ing editor ? Can you send Peter over to the telegraph 
office ? ” 

‘‘ It is a good idea. Do not let any one know, and 
we will have the answer held, for Peter to go for 
about 6 o’clock.” 

Peter brings them the following message : 

‘‘Supposed dispatch from me a forgery. Smith 
not married but engaged to Miss Kose. His as- 
sistant’s name Fiske, not Dunn. Something ras- 
cally afloat. Have sent your dispatch to his rooms. 
Better write fully to him. 

“ Jno. Gilmer Speed. ” 

When they read it, they laugh heartily. 

“Josiah has overreached himself,” Mrs. Peters 
says, “and it must have cost him a pretty penny. 
But it was most cleverly done. She was a splendid 
actress. But I saw from the first that the child was 
not hers. She mothered it on the stage only — not in 
my room. Wheh I saw her take a roll of bills out 
of her stocking I knew she wasn’t Smith’s wife—or 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


43 


anybody else’s. Wives don’t carry their money 
there.” 

‘‘ What could have been his object ?” 

“He expected that you would send Mr. Smith’s 
letters back without an explanation : that you would 
act in the idiotic way women usually do, and marry 
him before you found out the truth. But for the 
despatch from Mr. Speed you might have done it. ” 

Mary smiled and shook her head. 

“We have no proof that it was Josiah.” 

“ No legal proof, but have you any doubt ?” 

“None whatever. No one else would have a 
motive.” 

The next morning brought a despatch from Smith, 
perfectly satisfactory to Mary, and the next week he 
returned with his sister to escort Mary to the city on 
a visit to Mrs. Gilpin. 

“We must be married before Christmas,” he said 
to her. “ It is folly to wait till next summer as you 
wish. If this unknown enemy is Josiah,. his hate 
will not stop until we are married, and the next one 
he hires may be a tough to knock me over with a 
sand-club. My hfe will not be safe until I am your 
husband.’^ 

Smith did not believe what he said ; but he knew 
the weakness of women. Mary would not hesitate, 
perhaps, to risk her own life, but she wouldn’t let 
harm come to him. 

When Mary returned to her aunt, after a two 
months’ visit to the city, her first visitor was Josiah. 

“I am going to marry your hcilfj^ister next Sum 
fl,ay,” he sajs abruptly, 


44 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


did not know that I had one,” she rephes; 
‘‘but I wish you every happiness.” 

“ See here, what do you mean by contesting her 
claim to your uncle’s property ? You know you 
have no case and no rights.” 

“You told me I had ; that it was justly mine.” 

“Yes, but that was — if I managed your claim. 
You have doubtless got some one else to change the 
dates ; but I warn you my wife shall not be cheated 
out of a cent. I will go on the stand and tell the 
truth about your bii*th.” 

She looks at him sadly. 

“ My dear Josiah, I have been on the stand and 
told the whole truth, and I have submitted the 
marriage certificates unchanged and unaltered. I 
will take nothing by fraud.” 

“When was that ? ” 

“Yesterday. There has been some very import- 
ant testimony in the case — testimony that will sur- 
prise you when you hear it.” 

“I will hear it aU Saturday, when your sister 
comes, I suppose. Are there any other heirs ? ” 

“No ; only one grand-niece, born in lawful wed- 
lock, who will unquestionably inherit all. ” 

“Does Smith know how near he came to catching 
an heiress ? ” he asks. 

“ John knows nothing of the case. I didn’t care 
to mention it.” 

“It was better not to. Well, you have relieved 
my mind. It was very honorable of you to clear 
away aU the snags in the case, I^ow it is plain saib 


41 ) 


LUCK AND LOVE. 

He leaves in a spirit of exaltation. He forgives 
her. He forgives his enemies. 

Mary retons with her aunt to New York the 
following Saturday, although pressed by Josiah to 
stay for the wedding. 

‘‘She is not my step-sister, Josiah, and I will be 
no party to a fraud,” she said firmly. 

“You are disappointed and jealous,” he retorts, 
stopping her explanation that the claimant is the 
daughter of a twin sister of her father’s first wife, born 
on the same day as a daughter to her father, who 
had died in infancy, the similarity of names and 
ages suggesting to the girl the idea of pretending 
to be her dead cousin. 


Luck and lov^. 


46 


CHAPTER VI. 

EVERY WISE WOMAN BUILDETH HER HOUSE. 

1 1 T is two weeks before Christmas. Jack and 
I Mary are in the little parlor of his sister’s flat, 
J which they occupy regularly afternoons. His 
““ work begins at 7 p.m. 

‘‘Sweetheart,” he is saying, “the time is short to 
select and furnish our flat. We want to drink our 
Christmas brose under our own roof-tree — if not 
rafter. I am afraid it wiU be rafter, for we will 
have to take a fifth flat. You have put me off long 
enough — won’t you begin making the nest ? If you 
don’t I will have to take you to my den to spend the 
honeymoon.” 

“ I think I should be quite happy there.” 

“ To skirmish with me for meals ? Do you know 
how we would live ? We would begin Monday with 
a breakfast at the Hungaria and dinner at the Mor- 
ton House ; Tuesday it would bq Nash <& Crook’s or 
Leggett’s ; Wednesday, the International ; Thursday, 
Dennett’s or Hitchcock’s ; Friday, cheese, crackers 
and beer— we must save eight cents in cold cash for 
the beer — in our own room ; Saturday, after I get 
my pay, a table d’hote dinner at Moretti’s, and Sun- 
day — then we will feed like a prince and princess at 
a Chinese restaurant in Mott street.” 


LUCK AND LOVE. 


47 

She laughs softly an^ her free hand falls over his 
with a caressing touch. 

“You are not frightened at the prospect before 
you of feasting and fasting ? ” 

“ Are you 

“Yes.” His voice suddenly becomes grave. 
“ When I think of the change it will make in your life 
to bring you from the free country to shut you up in 
the prison of a city, without a tree or bit of grass 
nearer than the Park, in a house with ten families, 
away from all the friends of your youth, I am 
frightened at what the future may bring. If I were 
an ambitious man, my joe, with schemes for advance- 
ment and an intense desire to be rich, it would be 
very different. But I am not. What I am now I shall 
ever be. My salary may be five or ten dollars more, 
but I shall have only a salary so long as I live. I do 
not want to ‘ make ’ money by cheating some one 
else out of it, which is the only way it can be ‘ made’ 
nowadays. I shall never enter into the struggle for 
wealth, never have any ‘high aims,’ as the Sunday- 
school books caU them, but, loving work for work’s 
sake, be repaid by seeing it well done. As you grow 
you may desire that which I cannot get for you. 
Your ambitions may be destroyed. You may have 
Josiah’s wife — your cousin — patronize you, and you 
may think it would have been better had you mar- 
ried him and thrown me over. If in the time to 
come you should regret your choice it would be a 
very bitter trial for both of us.” 

“That is not the question. Jack. It is the man 
who regrets, never the woman. But your only fear 


48 


LtrCK AND LOVE. 


seems to be in regard to money — not for yourself, 
but for me. That is an idle fear. No woman with 
a husband who thought that way ever minded the 
money. You have enough. Not only now, but for 
any time.” 

You are to take my money each week and do 
the best you can with it. How much do you think 
you can spare for rent ? That is a practical question 
to be settled before we begin to hunt for flats within 
our means.” 

don’t think it is. Jack, if you will be willing 
to live in Second avenue, by the two little parks. 
There’s an old-fashioned house there I have fallen in 
love with. My aunt is living in it now. Put on 
your coat and let us pay her a visit.” 

His mind is a little uneasy as they start off at a 
brisk pace for the east side. He has caught glimpses 
of rather extravagant ideas and notions that worry 
him a trifle. 

Why haven’t you let me call on your aunt ?” he 
asks. ‘^Does she know that you have forbidden 
me 

‘Wes. I will remove the restriction now. She 
has been helping me prepare my trousseau, and we 
didn’t want to be bothered by men folks. It’s 
all ready now. Jack, and we can be married to- 
morrow— if you really want to marry me. Perhaps 
you don’t ? ” 

“Perhaps I don’t. Miss Eosebud ! ” he says with 
fine scorn. “And perhaps I do, my darling,”. he 
adds humbly. “ Do I act like a sheep going to the 
slaughter ?” 


LtICIv AND LOVe. 




^‘Sometimes.” She laiighs. 

Are you willing to accept the sacrifice 

‘‘Indeed, I arri. Where in the wide, wide world 
can I ever get another such a husband ? How can 
a woman ever love a second time as I love you ? ” 

He stops short, with difficulty refraining from a 
war-dance. 

“You dare not give me such abuse in the house,” 
he says, reproachfully. 

“Not at your sister’s,” she replies; “my hair 
musses too easily.” 

She walks up the stoop of one of the 'houses built 
when twenty-five feet were considered narrow 
enough for a dwelling. As he pulls the bell he 
notices the name “Rose” cut deep in the heavy 
stone. 

“My great-uncle Silas lived here for fifty-three 
years,” she says in reply to his glance. “He built 
it, I think.” 

The prim maid who opens the door steals a demure 
glance at the young man, and evidently approves of 
him. 

“ Tell Mrs. Barker that Mr. Smith and I are in the 
library.” 

The maid courtesies, and she leads Jack to the 
end of the wide, long hall. The library is the width 
of the house, back of the drawing-rooms. Jack’s 
eyes kindle as he sees the books and recognizes in a 
moment that he is in the lair of a man who has 
loved books and had a fortune to spend on them. 

She wheels a great easy-chair to the open hearth- 
fire. Then she sits down on his lap, puts her arm 


50 


LliCK ANl) LOVfi. 


around his neck and kisses him. She has been so 
coy and distant in the past that he is in a seventh 
heaven. 

‘‘I don’t mind how much you muss my hair 
here,” she says encomagingly. But really he didn’t 
need the encouragement. 

“Now, Jack, let’s talk about housekeeping,” she 
says, when her hair has been reduced to a shocking 



PUTS HER ARMS AROUND HIS NECK AND KISSES H THf , 


state of touslement. “ What have you to say about 
the house, anyway ? You want a den, of course, 
but the remainder is my kingdom, is it not ? Won’t 
this room do for your den ? Everything in it, as it 
stands, is yours to keep or throw away.” 

There’s only one thing in it that I really want — 
and that’s yourself.” 

am included with the furniture, of course,” 


Lticl^ AND LoV^l. 51 

she says demurely. I think you have me. Perhaps 
I have you. That the future must decide.” 

Explain this to me. Whose house is this ? Is it 
yours ? ” 

‘‘It is mine.” Then she tells him briefly of her 
Uncle Silas ; of Josiah’s temptation ; of her cousin’s 
imposture that had been exposed by her own mother ; 
of Josiah’s marriage to her before he found it out. 
“ That’s all,” she says ; “but, Jack, if you don’t want 
to live here on the east side, I will go anywhere you 
wish — on the top floor of a flat if you desire.” 

“Can you afford to keep this up? Have you 
money with it ? ” 

“ Can we afford, you mean. Yes. You will have 
about a thousand dollars a week, but it’s saddled 
with — me. Now, Jack, won’t you put away all 
your fears for the future and make me the happiest 
woman in the world ? ” 

Does any fool want to know what his answer 
was ? May not Josiah’s rage be left to the imagina- 
tion ? 


62 


'Tales oE marriage anj> divorce. 


A MAN WITH THREE WIVES. 

AND NEITHER ONE COULD GET A DIVORCE IF SHE 
DESIRED IT. — HOW THE MARRIAGE LAWS OF NEW 
. YORK PERMIT RICH MEN TO SET UP HAREMS OF 
LAWFUL WIVES AND RICH WOMEN TO KEEP ANDRONS 
OF LAWFUL HUSBANDS — THE ^HIRD WIFE TELLS THE 
STORY OF HER WOOING AND WEDDING. 

long ago— July 1, 1887 — the following 
n®|| letter from a lady was published in The 
Ij^ World, and answered by the editor, who 
A ^ gave the information desired as to the law : 

“My husband has three lawful wives now 
living, and I am the third. His first wife 
absented herself for five years and he married a 
second. From the second he obtained a divorce, 
valid in the State of Ilhnois, where he married me in 
1884. His first wife, upon our arrival in New York, 
demanded support, and as she was his legal wife he 
had to give it. He has always supported his second 
wife, who is, of course, his lawful wife, the divorce 
not being legal here. My marriage is perfectly legal, 
and my rights as a lawful wife are unquestioned, as 
our marriage was legal where it took place. Now 
the question arises, if my husband should die, would 
each of us be entitled to our third ? There is one 
child by the second wife, born recently, and the 


♦Republished from The World, July 13, 1887, 


A MAN WITH THREE WIVES. 


53 


question has been raised in regard to our husband 
making a will, which he declines to do. If he dies 
intestate does each one of his widows get a third, 
and will the child get nothing ? M. D. L.” 

Believing there was a story behind it that would 
interest the public, the writer of this letter was 
asked to give the details whereby she became the 
third living and lawful wife of her husband. She 
replied that her story was well-known to her 
friends, it was not particularly interesting, and she 
did not desire to become an object of impertinent 
curiosity to strangers. The latter objection having 
been overcome by a promise not to print her name 
and address, she consented to talk : 

‘^My father was a clergyman, and a professor of 
Greek in a small Western college. He died when I 
was seventeen and my sister Mary nineteen, leaving 
us penniless and without means where we were of 
earning a hearty living — and we were growing girls 
with appetites. My mother was an invalid, a cripple, 
and we starved genteelly for about four months, 
when my aunt, my father’s brother’s wife, invited 
us to come to New York and make our home with 
her. She was wealthy, a widow, and for a year all 
went well with us. ^ Mary obtained work as short- 
hand writer and amanuensis, but it was very much 
against my aunt’s will. Her employer was a visitor 
at the house, and an intimate friend, as we thought, 
of my aunt. It turned out that he was her lover, 
and that she was exceedingly jealous of Mary : but 
this we did not know till long after, She had cause, 


54 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

I am sorry to say, for Mary’s employer .made 
desperate love to her ; but she gave him no encour- 
agement, being engaged to and very much in love 
with our only cousin, who had just been graduated 
from Hertzog and expected soon to get a church and 
Mary. 

‘‘One Sunday my aunt quietly announced that 
she would sail for Europe on Wednesday and that 
she had rented the house and furniture on a three 
years’ lease, as she would occupy her husband’s house 
upon her return. W e took the hint, hired two partially 
furnished rooms, and moved into them Tuesday. 
Thursday we read the announcement of the marriage 
in the paper, but did not understand who the bride- 
groom was until Mary received notice from her em- 
ployer’s cashier that her services would no longer be 
required, as Mr. Jones had gone to Europe ori his 
bridal tour. 

“That Saturday night we counted our cash to 
know our pence, and found we had exactly $7.56. 
I will not weary you with the history of the next 
four months. I obtained eight situations and work- 
ed eight weeks, but received in all only $9. In five 
cases I worked for men who make a habit of hiring 
girls by the week, ‘faulting’ their work on Satur- 
day, and refusing to pay for that week. In two 
others I was told point-blank that I was expected to 
give more than mere faithful service, and in the only 
decent situation, with an honest employer, we were 
burned out after I had been there four days. I paid 
$3 of the $9 to intelligence-office keepers, but I could 
pot get a situation as general hoiiseworker, chamber- 


A MAN WITH THREE WIVES. 


55 


maid, or waitress. I was ^too pretty’ or ^ above the 
business,’ the ladies said. 

“ Mary’s luck was worse than mine, although she 
succeeded in getting several weeks’ consecutive work, 
for Henry, our cousin, died from a congestive chill 
brought on by getting wet through at a camp- meet- 
ing. 

We starved here in New York very ungenteelly. 
Everything we had, even to our underclothing, went 
to the pawnbrokers, to get simply bread for the 
mother. One day Mary got a situation, and the 
next I was down with a fever brought on by hunger 
and misery. Her employer must have suspected 
something of the tragedy we were concealing, or try- 
ing to conceal, for, two or three afternoons after, he 
called at our rooms, and when she came home she 
found a nurse there, a doctor just leaving, our larder 
stocked, and my mother crying with joy, and $20 in 
her pocket. I was too ill to be moved, but when we 
could he insisted upon our removing to one of his 
flats uptown, which he had furnished for us. He 
was goodness itself. 

‘‘But the world is not good. Because he paid 
Mary the same salary he had previously paid a man 
for the same work performed unsatisfactorily; be- 
cause he helped me, when I recovered, to a fair sit- 
uation, and because he called once or twice a week 
on our mother, the vilest reports were circulated con- 
cerning both him and us. They did not come to our 
ears, but they did to his. One evening he called and 
asked Mary to marry him. He told her frankly that 
lie had been married ten ye<^rs before; that he and 


56 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

his wife had quarrelled after three years of married 
life, and that she had left him. She had had a large 
fortune, while his at that time had been small. She 
had gone to Europe to live, and for six years he had 
not known whether she was living or dead. Under 
the New York law of 1878 he was perfectly free to 
marry again; but, if she had any doubts, she should 
be thoroughly satisfied and the doubts should be re- 
moved. He said that he knew she had no love to 
give him, such as a husband craved, but that he 
would not ask for. He begged her to take time, and 
to consider his offer thoughtfully. He did not give 
the shghtest intimation of the reports that had been 
circulated. 

‘^Mary’s heart was in Henry’s grave ; it had been 
the love of her life. She knew the offer came from a 
noble-minded, honest, and loyal gentleman — one 
worthy the best woman that ever lived, and one 
whom she would probably never meet the equal of 
again. After a week’s consideration she consented. 

Our mother did not .consent. She did not op- 
pose the marriage actively, but she objected to it 
quietly. Her point was that the first wife might be 
living, and if she returned would also be a legal 
wife. She objected to a man having two wives. 
Neither Mary nor I sympathized wither could under- 
stand this feeling. My father, as a Christian clergy- 
man, had held strong and unassailable grounds, 
which he had maintained for years, silencing all ad- 
versaries. The Mosaic law commanded polygamy 
in certain cases and permitted it in all. It was the 
common custom of all the world when the Saviour 


A MAN WITH THREE WIVES. 


57 


came, and there is not even a tradition that he dis- 
approved of it, or favored monogamy. Even St. 
Paid, the bachelor and woman-hater, who despised 
marriage of itself, denied plural wives only to bishops, 
permitting all others to marry as many as Solomon 
had if they were fools enough to want them. My 
father held, and no one could controvert him, 
that the monogamic craze had no foundation in 
Christian doctrine or teaching, and was in fact direct- 
ly opposed to it. The objections to dual marriage 
were now, and always had been, civil and political, 
mot religious ; and whenever the civil law permitted 
polygamy, it was right and proper and moral, and 
the highest duty of the Christian, whose religious 
teachings held it in honor, to practise it. Mother 
never agreed with this, but we saw the logic and 
the force of the reasoning, and we always sided with 
him. If the law made Mary a legal wife, as it un- 
questionably did, she did not care two pins whether 
the first wife returned or not. I make this full ex- 
planation now, instead of later, because you have 
guessed that Mary’s husband is now my husband, 
and you have been on tenter-books to ask the ques- 
tion. 

And so they were married. He, as you know, 
is worth several milhons. Every pleasure and every 
luxury that thoughtfulness and love could suggest 
were showered on us. No son ever tried to make a 
mother happy as he tried to make ours. We were one 
family. I do not think any one of us ever had such 
perfect and divine ^rest ’ for two years as that whicli 
followed Mary’s marriage, for Robert as well as for us. 


58 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

There does not live on this earth a sweeter, purer, 
nobler man. He never had a selfish thought. Con- 
stantly thinking> of others, he has never an oppor- 
tunity of thinking of himself. Deriving all his own 
pleasure from the pleasure of others, he is a living 
embodiment of the imaginary man of Comte, with 
the Ego entirely lacking, of whom my father never 
tired of talking, declaring he was an impossibility 
while we were ‘ born in sin.’ 

“Do you wonder that I learned to love him 
wholly, completely, perfectly ? Would it not have 
been a miracle if any young woman whom Eros had 
never before met could have lived in close and inti- 
mate companionship and comaraderie with such a 
man for two years and not have had her whole 
soul-life absorbed and united with his ? And yet so 
thoroughly were our four lives but one perfect life 
that I should never have realized the change or been 
aware of it even now but for an accident. It was a 
shock to me . • I had often derided the novelists who 
make either party in such a predicament feel like 
running away. I had often said that one in love 
must be happy in the loved one’s presence. But I 
found it was not so. From the time I discovered 
my secret I was in pain that often became agony, 
and I longed to run away and hide — why, I know 
not. 

“It was not jealousy. It was not thought of 
discovery. It was not desire of possession. 
Whether he loved me or loved me not, were 
thoughts, or rather was a thought, for they are the 
opposite sides of one thought, which pever rose into 


A MAN WITH THREE A\HVES. 


69 


cognition. My love alone gave me the pain. A 
friend of mine was going to Europe. I asked her 
to let me go with her, and she consented. 

‘^When I told Mary she kissed me and said: 
‘Wait. Do not bind yourself for a few days.’ She 
would not then tell me why, nor could I imagine 
her reason. I saw from her manner that something 
had happened, and waited. 

“During the preceding three months Kobert had 
been noticeably graver and sadder. We had all 
observed that he had lost some of his bright cheer- 
fulness and set it down to indigestion and malaria, 
from which he was a chronic sufferer. Later I 
knew that it came from his bitter fight against his 
love for me— which he reahzed long before I dis- 
covered mine for him. 

“What happened, how Mary discovered it or 
coaxed his secret from him, I am not going to tell 
you, because I don’t know. She had shared it with 
him for three days when I told her I was going to 
Europe, and it was that, she told me long after, 
that gave her the first intimation that I had been 
wounded by the same arrow. 

“That night, with her arms around my heck, she 
made me confess. Her love washed away the 
shame of it . Her caresses soothed and comforted 
me. In the middle of the night I awoke and found 
her kneeling by my bed smiling into my face. 

“The next morning, after breakfast, she carried 
me off to her own room, stopping to say something 
to a servant. A few minutes after Robert came 
asking if anything was wrong. ‘Yes,’ she replied. 


60 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

‘ Meg is running away to Europe to avoid you, Eob. 
Can you imagine why ? Meg, Eob has been trying 
to run away to Mexico to avoid you. Can you 
imagine why ? I will give you just one hour to ex- 
plain yourselves fully to one another, and then — I 
want to talk to you both.’ 

^^When Mary rejoined us she insisted tha-t our 
love was right and proper, refused to Hsten for a 
moment to any apologies and brushed aside as non- 
sense any approach to tragedy. It was high 
comedy, but no tragedy. Her proposal was that we 
should act as sensible, rational beings, and, without 
any loss of love and affection as we then stood, 
Eobert and she — in fact all of us — were to take 
residence in Connecticut, and Eobert was to get a 
divorce and marry me. 

I declined to take any part in such action. My 
refusal was decided, and she knew it would be use- 
less to urge me. My outspoken reasons were simply 
that no husband ever got a legal divorce without the 
wife’s character suffering. She would lose fright- 
fully in position, in everything, as a divorced wife. 
My real objection was that there was no more rea- 
son why she should sacrifice herseff to me than I to 
her. That she loved Eobert I knew. She could no 
more help it than I could. She might not love 
him as she had loved Henry, while I did ; but you 
know all that has been said on that subject. Nor 
would Eobert listen for a moment^to such a proposi- 
tion. I knew that he loved her ; I know that he 
loves her. The thought did not then and does not 
pow give me one jealous twinge, Do I not love 


A MaK with three wives. 


(U 


them both ? Does she not love us both ? Why 
should he not love both ? 

‘‘ Well, there we were, with no solution of the 
difficulty that was acceptable. She claimed the 
right to absolute dictatorship and decreed that 
we should act sensibly, stop all thought of going 
away, and love one another in a rational man- 
ner and without making a sin of an innocent 
matter, until some way out of the snarl should be 
seen and approved. ‘AIT the world knows you love 
one another,’ she said. ‘ It would be shocked if you 
didn’t. Suppose your love is a little stronger than 
is customary ? Why should you make harm of it 
on that account or go into heroics ? We do not 
measure our love by pecks and bushels.’ 

‘‘You cannot imagine what effect her quiet words 
had on me, and on Eobert also. . It made me 
ashamed of my tragedy feelings. In half an hour 
we were talking as unconstrainedly as if we had not 
been ‘ slumbering on a volcano.’ (That’s the right 
phrase, is it not ?) All my pain had gone. My love 
for Robert was the same pleasure it had been two 
years previously. 

“You may think there was some emban’assment, 
but there was not the slightest. Robert had kissed 
me often during the first year of mamage. We 
used to walk up and down on the pleasant evenings 
with his arms around our waists. No stranger 
could by watching have decided which was the v/ife 
and which the sister. He would sit between us, and 
our places seemed natural at either side. He 
thought for us both, he loved us both, and when we 


02 TALES OF MARRIAGL AND DIVOROL. 

talked of our happiness, which was often, he would 
say that he hoped the fairy prince who would come 
for me had not yet set out on his travels. His old 
life, which had been frozen out, was resumed — only 
the fairy prince had married and settled down with 
another woman, and I was to stay with Eob until 
the princess should die. 

^‘This is not a bit like the story books, I know ; 
and I am very sorry for it. I told you that what you 
were pleased to call my ‘ story ’ was not interesting; 
but you insisted upon hearing it, and your dis- 
appointment is not my fault. I can only tell you 
what really happened. There were no stolen inter- 
views, no broken hearts, no passionate vows and no 
secrets revealed to villains and kept back from 
friends. It was all utterly and completely common- 
place. We were as happy as any three children. If 
Eob felt like kissing me, he did. If I felt like kiss- 
ing him, I did. Neither he nor I looked around to 
see if anybody saw us, any more than we had done 
two years before. This may have come from our 
perfect security, for neither had a shadow of fear of 
losing the other. Perhaps that was the reason why 
no strong emotion was ever brought into action, 
and it may also explain why it is always so different 
and so tragic in the novels. Commonplace is hardly 
strong enough to express the situation at our home 
or a month or more after Mary forced an explana- 
tion. We were stupid— positively stupid. 

‘^Mary referred once or twice to the subject of a 
dworce, but I would not listen. ‘When you can give 
hxm to me for a husband without losing one atom 


A MAi^ WITH three WfVEg. 

as his wife you may talk of it/ I told her. ^ I am 
perfectly happy as it is. He loves us both and we 
love him. There is nothing can add to our happi- 
ness.’ 

’ ^ One day a visitor was explaining that her hus- 
band had two wives and Mary listened attentively. 

I did not. Then she followed up the case by con- 
sulting a lawyer and asking questions. When she 
was sure of her ground, she proposed that Eobert 
should go to Chicago and apply for a divorce. She 
would not contest it, or leave this State, unless he 
wished. The divorce would then be valid in Illinois, * 
and Eobert could marry in that State. Such a mar- 
riage would be lawful in this State and in any State. 
The divorce would not be lawful in this State — it 
would be nothing but a piece of waste paper — so 
that it would not affect her in any way. She would 
continue Eobert’s lawful wife and I would be the 
same. She was in earnest. She loaded us down 
with opinions and decisions, and in the end she 
carried her point. 

‘‘ Eobert owns a good deal of property in Chicago. 
He is a partner in two business firms, and he has a 
little cottage out on the prairie where he is supposed 
to live, and does live for about two weeks in every 
year. His name is, of course, in the Chicago 
Directory, and he is technically a resident of Elinois. 

It did not take over six weeks to get the divorce. 

“Mary and I went to Springfield, and Eobert and 
I were married there. Mary insisted upon our leav- 
ing her with a friend in Denver, and our honeymoon 
was passed at Greenwood Lake. At the end of the 


04 TALES OP MARRIAGP AND DIVOROP. 

week we returned to Denver, and after a short visit 
there we three came East again, paying quite a long 
one in Chicago. A chance remark by Mary, that 
she was not Robert’s wife in Illinois, caused me to 
cut it short off. I often smile now when I think of 
her embarrassment, as I took her hand and Robert’s, 
soon after the train left Northeast, and, joining 
them, said, ‘You are now in New York State. 
Robert, this is your wife, Mary ; Mary, this is your 
husband, Robert. Bless you, my children.’ • 

“Our first real embarrassment came when we 
^ returned home. Two wives, no matter how much 
they may love one another, cannot live in the same 
house. Why? Any woman will understand. A 
man could not. I learned it in a few days. Robert 
bought this house for me, the next week. My sister 
lives in the next street, at the corresponding number 
and directly in the line, so that we have practically 
rooms on opposite sides of the court, but each have 
our separate homes. Robert’s home address is at 
Mary’s. It was his father’s. The two houses are 
merely refuges or retreats. We never eat a meal 
apart. Mary is here, or I am there, all the time. I 
was there when you called. I cannot help it if you 
do not understand what I mean by a refuge. I do 
not always pick my words. 

“Shortly after we came back from the West 
Robert’s first wife returned to the city from Europe 
and called upon us. She was politely insolent, but 
Mary was more than her match. She had lost the 
bulk of her fortune, and her husband must support 
her, she said. Robert made not the slightest 


A MAN WITH WIV^ES. 


65 


objection. He settled on her an income equal to 
what she had when she married him. This did not 
satisfy her. She wanted Robert. To that both 
Mary and I objected, and Robert objected also — of 
course. 

‘^She brought suit to set Mary’s marriage aside, 
and was beaten. Only Mary could make such an 
application, the Court told her lawyer. 

‘‘Then she played her best trump. She moved 
to have my marriage set aside on the ground that 
it was illegal in the State where it was performed, 
as she was living and Robert’s wife, and the Illinois 
law did not contain the provision that made Mary’s 
marriage in this State legal. It was preliminary to 
an action for divorce, with me as co-respondent. 
Robert had been too thoughtful of me to get caught 
in this way, and produced a divorce obtained in 
Chicago from her dated four days before his divorce 
from Mary. Our marriage was, of course, held to be 
valid under the Illinois law, and therefore it could 
not be questioned by the courts of this State. She 
was beaten a-t every point and the validity of our 
marriages established beyond question. She is quite 
polite now and makes formal monthly calls on each 
of us, chiefly to talk about Robert’s will and to urge 
him to make one. 

“ Robert wrote to each one of our intimate friends 
a letter explaining exactly what had been done and 
the law, in order to relieve Mary of the load of 
explanation that fell upon her. My marriage was a 
nine days’ wonder, and then it ceased to have any 
interest. 


C6 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

‘'Yes, I know several households here in New 
York where polygamy is practised. Our open and 
honest marriage, which was published in all the 
papers, shamed a number of our acquaintances who 
were taking secret advantage of the law, and they 
came to us wondering how we could ‘do it so 
openly.’ 

“I am happy to say that my marriage to my 
sister’s husband has not lost me a friend or put me 
to the slightest embarrassment. It has not added to 
my happiness particularly, because that was an 
impossibility. 

“Please don’t ask me any more questions. I 
didn’t know you were writing shorthand, and 
thought you were merely taking notes. Will you 
read what is written ? ” 

This was done, and one or two slight corrections 
were made. 


The law by which the second marriage became 
valid reads as follows : 

“Section 6. If any person whose husband or wife 
shall have absented himseK or herself for the space 
of five successive years, without being known to 
such person to be living at that time, shall marry 
during the lifetime of such absent husband or wife, 
the marriage shall be void only from the time that 
its nullity shall be pronounced by a court of com- 
petent authority. 

“ motion to declare such a marriage void can 
come only from the innocent third party. The 
marriage is legal while it lasts and the children 
inherit..— Bowers vs. Bowers, 9 N. Y. L. O., 146.” 


A MAN wmi TPIKEE AVIVES. (>? 

The Court of Appeals has decided (June, 1883) in 
regard to marriages : 

Where a niarriage is valid by the laws of another 
State, its validity cannot be questioned in this 
State.— 92 N. Y., 526.” 

On the subject of divorce, the same Court said in 
1880, in the case of the People vs. Baker : 

A court of another State has no jurisdiction to 
dissolve the marriage of a citizen of this State domi- 
ciled here, who is not served with process in the 
foreign State and who does not appear in the action. 
—76 N. Y., 78.” 

What do I think of the story ? That my hus- 
band’s dark, red Margaret has blundered in making 
it public,” said Mrs. L. primus, smiling, as she 
leaned back in a low rocker on the veranda of a 
Long Branch hotel, Wednesday.* I have not the 
slightest objection in the world to these women 
making excuses for the position they find them- 
selves in, but the wiser course for them would have 
been to keep silent. I heard when I was in Florence 
of my husband’s second marriage. Some friend of 
his was kind enough to send me a copy of The 
World containing the notice. But when upon my 
return to this city I learned that the marriage was 
legal and paid a duty call upon my successor in his 
affections, I was surprised to find that he had lately 
married still another. 

“Let me deny right here that I ^wanted him,’ or 
ever said or did anything to Ayarrant such a state- 


From TJie World, July 16, 1887. 


TALES OP MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

ment. I had him for three years, and we parted 
amicably at the end of that time — he to go his way 
and I to go mine. We were never made for one 
another, and we realized it thoroughly. If he 
wished to go through the form of a marriage to sat- 
isfy the scruples of a woman not willing to live in 
open violation of decency, I had no objection. But 
I consider the law an outrage when it gives her 
equal standing with myself. I consider it scandal- 
ous when it permits him to marry as many women 
as he pleases— at my expense, mind you. 

“ What do I mean? Why, when I married him, 
the law endowed me with a one-third life interest 
in his real estate. When he married a second wife, 
this new law reduced my life interest to one-sixth ; 
and when he married the third, it reduced it' to one- 
ninth. There is nothing that I know of to prevent 
his marrying a dozen others and reducing my en- 
dowment to nothing. He takes my property, with- 
out my consent, in order to endow them with a 
wife’s portion. Is that fair or right ? Ought he not 
to do it at his own expense, not mine ? 

Yes, I was interested in Miss Margaret’s story. 
She made all that could possibly be made of it. Let 
me say what she could not. * She is a remarkably 
beautiful woman of the type my husband always 
had a weakness for. I would not wonder at any 
man’s brief infatuation with her. Her sister Mary 
is what we called 'clever.’ Her father filled her 
with Greek and Latin and logic, and all the useless 
sort of information that some people are fond of 
acquiring. I never had any taste for that sort of 


A MAN WITH THREE WIVES. 


69 


thing. It seemed too much like the ^ fad ’ some folks 
have of collecting soiled postage-stamps from old 
envelopes. One seems to me as silly as the other. 
Why should any one learn a language that has not 
been spoken for two thousand years when we have 
in our libraries and can buy in our bookstores ex- 
cellent translations in modern English of everything 
that was ever written in them ? Mr. Kuskin once 
said to me that the principal cause of poverty was 
to be found in wasted effort. If this is not useless 
work I don’t know what it is. 

‘To return from our lambs to our sheep?’ I 
did try and set these marriages aside when I found 
that they had robbed me, but not before. It is 
perfect folly to say that my husband did not know 
for five years that I was living or dead. If he did 
not it was because he would not. He knew the 
names of my lawyers. He knew my brother. He 
knew my sister. They all live in New York. He 
could get my address from either one at any time, 
and not more than a week after his second marriage 
he sent a release of dower to my lawyers, asking 
them to forward it for my ‘ signature. Yet the Court 
said he was not bound to make inquiries and it was 
my duty to keep him informed if I did not wish 
him to remarry. The judge was a man and sided 
with a man, of course. 

“ The most cruel part of this whole business is 
one you noted in a headline — that I cannot get a 
divorce from my husband. If I should apply for 
one I would be laughed out of court. I asked a 
Supreme Court Judge and he told me that in no 


70 


TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 


State in the Union could I get a divorce, as I had no 
reason. Reason! Did you ever hean such talk? 
Here my husband is living in open violation of the 
commandment, not with one woman but with two, 
and I, his lawful wife, have no remedy ! ” 

''But if you wish I can tell you how to get a 
divorce. There is one' State, and only one, where 
you can get it.” 

" Would it be lawful in this -^State ? ” 

"Not unless you could get your husband to con- 
test it, but you could marry again in that State and 
have two husbands if you wish, both lawful hus- 
bands in this State.” 


"Thank you, but one husband will last me for 
my life. I am a little old-fashioned. I don’t believe 
in divorces, or two husbands, or two wives. I be- 
lieve that a marriage is for life, and merely asked 
the question out of curiosity. I made a mistake 
when I married, but I am perfectly willing to abido 
by the consequences. I was educated to believe that 
it was cowardly to act otherwise, and cowardice is 
not known in my family.” 

But suppose you should be left a widow ?” 

“That would be a different matter. I believe in 
widows remarrjdng. There are many congenial 
•marriages. If I could make one, and was rSison- 
ably sure of it, I might. But, honestly, I have no 
lU feeling against my husband, and do not wish to 

e left one of his many widows, or to be free to 
marry again.” 


<< T*u of any other like cases ? ” 

I have heard several mentioned in conversation. 


A MAK WITH niEEE WIVES. 71 

This law providing for a second wife is not ten 
years old yet, and the law providing for an indefinite 
number of wives dates only from 1883, I am told. 
When we were married such a thing was not 
dreamed of. Some of my friends say it is common 
enough now, and I have had several vile stories 
whispered to me. Times change faster than we can 
change, I suppose. I have lived in the south of 
France, in Italy and for a year in Spain. I have 
heard of many scandals and of immorality, but 
there it is called by its right name. Here the pro- 
tection of the law is thrown around it and it is no 
longer vice or crime. But I cannot get over an old- 
fashioned prejudice that the law cannot make black 
white.” 

What do you think will be the outcome of the 
recent marriages ? Do you think there will ever be 
a fourth wife to stiU further attenuate your life 
interest ? ” 

It is not probable. From what I can judge Miss 
Mary is exactly suited to my husband — just such a 
wife as would fully satisfy him.” 

And the other ? ” 

When I first saw her I thought of a remark I 
once heard a Spaniard make concerning one hke 
her, ^ Tomava la por rosa, mas devenia cardo. ’ ” 

The story told the reporter by the third wife drew 
forth the following letter from the second : 

To the Editor of The World : 

I wish to enter my most earnest protest against 
| 3 be publication in The World to-day of a story^ in 


Y2 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

which no person, save my husband and his wives, 
could have any rightful interest, as a most wanton 
invasion of the rights of individuals and of the 
sanctity of homes. It was objectless, unless to 
gratify prurient curiosity was its object. It taught 
no moral lesson. It added nothing to the experience 
of the world. It merely held up to the public gaze 
a tortured heart, torn from the breast of a suffering 
woman, and, with worse than Parrhasian in- 
humanity, called attention to this quiver and that 
throb, as a mere matter of sport. 

‘‘ When I refused to talk to your reporter upon 
the subject of my marriage, it was not, as I 
courteously explained to him, because I wished to 
keep the particulars from the public, but because 
the public had no right to know them. My light- 
hearted, volatile, and thoughtless sister was then 
sought, and her frankness, her innocence, and her 
great love were used to obtain that which no one 
had a right to have, the mere possession of which is 
a crime. No blame can attach to her for telling of 
her marriage, for we have nothing to conceal, and 
this story, which she does not understand and may 
never comprehend, is to her one of the sweetest 
possible mysteries of a wonderful and entrancing 
love, which she never can, and I hope never will, 
tire of discussing, dreaming of, and listening to. 
But such a story from her lips is a sacred charge. 
It is the innocent household secret revealed by a 
babe's babble. To proclaim it from the housetops, 
to cry it through the streets, to trumpet it to all 
lands and all nations, is — what ? Can words describe 
such vileness ? 

Do I speak strongly ? I feel strongly. It is not 
because I have been misrepresented, for so far as 
accuracy is concerned you used proper precautions 
to obtain a story which could not be contradicted. 
A few who read it will apprehend that it is imper- 


A MAN WITO THREE AVIVES. T3 

feet and incomplete, that it is only a part of the 
truth, that it is but a few lines taken here and there 
at random from the tragedy of a life, and these will 
see by divine instinct how, without misrepresenta- 
tion, I have been misunderstood. But to the mass 
I will be the woman who sold her husband’s service 
for a price ; one to be scorned ; one to be loathed by 
the self-righteous wopian. No other object Avould 
justify its publication. Nothing else would keep it 
from being passed over with wonder as a waste of 
space that might bette be occupied by a paid 
advertisement. 

I scorn to justify myself to the world. There is 
one — my husband — who has learned, since he mar- 
ried my sister, the motives which prompted me to 
my action in bringing about that union, and he, 
keen and merciless in all questions of right, has 
knelt and kissed my hand in honor. He knows 
now my heart. He knows my mind. My sister 
feels ‘ the kiss of love ; me mightier transports 
move and thrill.’ To few women is it given on this 
earth to see that light in a husband’s eyes which 
falls upon me. It is in truth the light which shines 
about the Holy Grail. What consort have I with 
those for whom that story was published ? What 
explanation have I to offer them 

To you, to the few who can see if they will that 
it is but the glimpse of a battlefield, caught Avhile 
for an instant the fog lifted, only to shut down 
more dense than before, I will say that it was my 
firm intention to recognize the Chicago divorce as 
valid and binding in this State as in Illinois, and in 
this I intended to deceive my sister. My husband 
knew it. My mother knew it. Only my sister did 
not know it. The law might not recognize the 
divorce ; I might still have to sign a release of 
dower when real estate was sold. But that would 
have been a petty foi*m which could not matter, 


T4r TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE, 

Was it not natural at Northeast for us to be 
embarrassed ? Could we then undeceive her and 
cause her pain ? That, six months after the 
marriage, all vows and all intentions, all under- 
standings and misunderstandings, were swept away 
as if they were not, when for the first time in our 
lives my husband and I stood face to face and read 
the truth and the whole truth that filled both our 
hearts, is something for which I offer no apology. 

I do not think any will be needed with you and 
them, and for others I car^ not. 

But, putting myself to one side, there are many 
things in that pitiful and half-told story which by 
their very half truths misrepresent others in the 
most unjust way. The little spasm of jealousy 
when we reached home, so natural and yet so un- 
called for, undreamed of by any one at the time, 
was new to me when I read it, and probably was 
never fully understood by her for what it was. It 
was plainly nothing more than a passing pang from 
which she could not have been spared without the 
greater suffering involved in an explanation of why 
it was causeless. I know it does not exist and has 
not existed since there has been anything to justify 
it, for, if it had, there should have never have been 
cause. While none existed it was not looked for 
and not suspected. 

‘‘My husband’s wealth has never been a subject 
of consideration by my sister or myself, but my 
sister could not love my child more if it were her 
own, and she is more solicitous for its future than I 
am. When she was informed in the most impressive 
manner, and for an object, that if my husband 
should die without a will the child would inherit 
nothing, each widow taking a third, she did not 
believe it, and wrote to you. How her innocent 
action is made to appear selfish and self-seeking by 


A MAN WITH THREE WIVES. 76 

the lack of knowledge of the circuinstaiices ! Could 
anything be more unjust ? 

‘^ And so on through the whole story. Every 
action, without its attendant circumstances, told 
by one who, knowing them, made the proper allow- 
ances to one who, knowing nothing of them, made 
no modifications, is a matter for the private judg- 
ment of the doer. No one else is a proper judge or 
is entitled to sit in judgment. 

‘‘If I were to tell the sam§ story it might be 
recognized and it might not, but I do not think it 
would. My version might be as incomplete as the 
other — it would certainly be duUer and more stupid. 
My objection is that whoever tells such a story 
cannot do so, to one not a personal friend cognizant 
of many material matters, in such a way as to avoid 
misconstruction, and on this account to publish it is 
a crime. ‘ The speaker is one and the listener is 
another,’ says a Turkish proverb. With us the 
distinction is not observed as it should be. 

“A lady connected with an afternoon paper went 
to some little trouble for a formal introduction and 
sought a personal acquaintance not long ago, in 
order to get, as she naively informed me, ‘my 
' impressions as a plural wife and my ideas of polyg- 
amy in New York,’ in order to contrast them with 
those she ‘ had gathered from the plural wives of 
Mormons.^ My advice to her was to become the 
plural wife of some good man and gather them for 
herself, fresh from the vine, with the bloom still 
on, not to take the second-hand ideas of some one 
who would talk for an object or for some unworthy 
motive — provided she wanted them for her own 
use. If she wished them for a market I had none 
that were salable or of the fashionable pattern, and, 
so far as my knowledge and experience went, I did 
not know of any plural wife who had. 

“Novels are more popular than treatises on logic, 


76 


TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 


and the proportion between tlieir sales, which is 
about one milhon to one, shows very fairly the 
comparative popularity of Falsehood and Truth. 
Ever since the latter went in bathing the world 
has been ashamed of her, and so long as newspapers 
and magazines are mere mercantile ventures, made 
and unmade by the breath of popular favor, the 
truth concerning polygamy will never appear in 
their columns, except by accident. The falsehood 
that tickles the taste of the self-righteous Pharisee, 
the lie that confirms the slander against a fellow 
Christian, alone are fashionable, acceptable, salable, 
usable, printable. 

A pretence may be made of printing the truth, 
as in this case, but only where the half truth 
panders worse than the whole lie to the passion and 
the prejudice of the ignorant and the depraved. 

Yours truly, M. V. L. 

‘‘New York, July 13.” 


A Boy with Two Fathers. 


INHERITING AS NEXT OP KIN HIS MOTHER'S HUSBANDS’ 
ESTATE — AN INTERESTING ILLUSTRATION OF THE 
VAGARIES OF THE MARRIAGE LAWS OF NEW YORK 
STATE — HOW TWO HUSBANDS STRUGGLED FOR ONE 
WIFE — NO DIVORCE POSSIBLE — THE STATUTE OF 1878 
EXPLAINED. 



Y friend Richard Smith is one of the most 
amiable of mankind ; without a vice, frank, 
kM kind-hearted, impulsive, generous to a 
fault, always ready to neglect his own busi- 
ness to serve a friend, and until recently one of the 
unluckiest men I ever met. He was barely twenty- 
one when he married Clara. Neither had a cent. 
But they loved one another like two turtle-doves, 
and were never unhappy. They often had very 
hard lines indeed, for they were gentle and proud. 
Dick never got a situation without losing it almost 
immediately by trying to help some one who was in 
trouble. Once or twice he resolved never to do it 
again, and then he lost his next situation because 
he didn’t. For a long time it had been only bread 
and the rent, and not always both together, when 
one day he received an offer from a cousin in Nevada 
to join him in a venture and Clara received notice 
that her aunt had left her $5,000. 


^8 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

Dick had long been discouraged, although he had 
never let Clara know it. ‘‘ You take the $5,000 and 
open a boarding-house,” he said to her, “ and I will 
go to Nevada and see if I can’t escape this ill-luck 
that seems to pursue me here.” She cried, of course, 
but for the first time she found Dick bent on having 
a way that was not hers. The secret of his 
obduracy was that he wouldn’t five on his wife’s 
money. 

He went to Nevada. She hired a house on Liv- 
ingston street and then moved to Willow. He 
wrote regularly for three months. Then his letters 
ceased. 

Her venture was like that of every woman who 
keeps boarders. Her capital was slowly eaten up. 
Before five years had passed it was all gone and 
debts began to press her; the rent had become a 
nightmare and the butcher’s bill was a burden. 

One of her first boarders was William Jones, aged 
about forty. He was clever, well-read, gentle- 
mannered ; but he had a monomania. With the 
strength of , a bull and the constitution of a mule, 
he imagined himself an invalid and dying of nerv- 
ous debility. On this account he resigned his seat 
in the Produce Exchange, placed the collection of 
his rents in the hands of an agent, hired a male 
nurse and gently resigned himself to die in Clara’s 
second fioor front and hall bedroom, for which he 
paid $35 per week. Clara believed implicitly in his 
fad and petted and made much of ^‘the poor dying 
man.” As the years rolled on and he grew stouter 
instead of thinner, her behef never wavered. Her 


A BOY WITH TWO FATHERS. 79 

sympathetic attentions developed into a routine that 
at last became second nature. Apart from the 
hypochondriasm, Jones was very pleasant company. 
The women called him ‘‘charming,” and their 
husbands admitted that he was “a good fellow.” 
At the same time they preferred him at a distance 
— from their wives. 

When Clara’s financial difficulties came to his 
knowledge he asked her to marry him and end her 
worry. He was worth about $80,000, invested in 
good tenement property, paying from 10 to 12 per 
cent, and he offered to settle it all on her, uncon- 
ditionally. A year passed before she would listen 
to his proposition to be left a rich widow in a very 
short time. He showed no invalidism in his 
wooing, which was of the most . vigorous kind, 
but his “health never was worse.” His hours 
were numbered, he told me, in confidence, one 
day. They might have been, but the number was 
an excessively large one — ^larger than any ordinary 
man’s. 

Clara’s family highly approved the match, and 
did all they could to help it along. To her 
objections that Dick might not be dead, her brother 
(a lawyer) pointed to the marriage law : 

“ Section 6. If any person whose husband or wife 
shall have absented himself or herself for the space 
of five successive years, without being known to 
such person to be living during that time, shall 
marry during the lifetime of such absent husband 
or wife, the marriage shall be void only from the 
time that its nullity shall be pronounced by a court 
of competent authority.” 


80 TALES OF MARRIAGE AKD DIVORCE. 

You cannot get a divorce,” he told her. This 
marriage will be lawful so long as it remains in 
force. There is no reason why you should not 
enter into it.” 

They were married about three months after the 
five years had expired, Jones making a will 
bequeathing all his property to his wife. The old- 
boarders were not disturbed, but new ones were not 
taken. The marriage made but little difference in 
the household arrangements, and it remained one 
of the most charming boarding-houses on the 
Heights, where the women never quarrelled and the 
men never sat up till 2 o’clock playing poker. (The 
reason for the latter was because they both worked 
on a morning newspaper and didn’t get home till 
4 A.M.) 

Clara was working on the sewing-machine in her 
mother’s dining-room one morning about seven 
months after, when Eichard walked in, the same 
unlucky fellow that he was when he left. A gasp, 
a little scream, and they were hugging to make up 
for the six years’ loss. It was two hours before 
Clara remembered her second marriage, and it was 
her mother’s ‘‘What will William say?” that re- 
called it. The mother told Dick the story. 

“That’s all right,” he said. “You are not the 
least bit to he blamed, Clara, but I am no Enoch 
Arden and I’ll go home with you and give W illi am 
his quietus. Then we’ll be happy ever after.” 

Jones showed no surprise when Smith explained 
who he was. “ I have been expecting you daily for 
several months. It is usual for things to happen 


A BOY WITH TWO F'ATHEIRS. 

that are not wanted. Please understand that I 
haven’t your wife, but my own. Clara may be 
your wife. I don’t deny it. She is^ also my wife. 
The latter fact has no connection mth the former. 
I am ‘ the man in possession.’ She stays here.” 

Smith found that the ‘‘quietus” was more diffi- 
cult than he had anticipated. There was a dead- 
lock. “No man in this country can force his wife 
to live with him,” said Jones ; “but Clara, you will 
not desert your lawful husband.” 

Then she began to cry. She was no heroine ; 
only a sweet and gentle and weak woman. Never 
mind the conflict of emotions in her breast. I am 
not writing a novel, only the dry outlines of a 
commonplace law case, and the thoughtful may 
imagine them. She would not choose between 
them. She could not. They were both gentle- 
men, and they did not distress her, nor did they 
compel her to choose, for both were fearful of the 
result. 

She proposed going hom^ to her mother’s until 
they had “settled it.” They escorted her there and 
returned to argue. Both were obstinate, but logi- 
cal and wilhng to concede each other’s strong 
points. At 4 A.M. they were no nearer agreement 
than before, and Jones invited Smith to take a bed, 
which he did. 

At the end of three days, spent in argument and 
chess. Smith resolved upon heroic measures. His 
lawyer moved to have the marriage Jo Jones de- 
clared void from and after that date. 

Jones opposed the motion. But opposition was 


TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

not necessary. The Court refused to grant the 
motion, as a matter of course. No man can take 
advantage of his own wrong-doing. 

It was the last case heard that day, and when the 
court adjourned both husbands sought a personal 
interview with the Judge. He was interested and 
listened carefully. His advice was given with hesi- 
tation, but frankly and kindly. 

‘Ht would defeat the object of the law, Mr. 
Smith, if the party by whose fault the comphcation 
arises could have the second marriage set aside on 
motion. It would work wrong to the innocent 
party. It has been decided by the General Term, 
in a similar case, that the second party^ — the one 
who remarries — cannot have the marriage set aside. 
This leaves only the innocent third party as the 
proper person to make such a motion. If you, Mr. 
Jones, will move to have this marriage set aside, I 
will grant the motion. I do not think you will suc- 
ceed upon appeal, Mr. Smith, as the decisions are 
miiform.” 

‘‘ I will never consent,” said Jones. 

It must stand until you change your mind.” 

‘‘But what are we to do ?” asked Smith. “She 
is my wife.” 

“Yes, she is your lawful wife. She is also the 
lawful wife of Mn Jones. She must remain the 
lawful wife of two husbands until Mr. Jones con- 
sents to a dissolution of the second marriage.” 

“But cannot she get a divorce ?” 

“As I understand it, she is passive in the mat- 
ter; but if she wishes to, she cannot unless one of 


A boy With fWo 




you give her cause, under the statute. Nor can 
you, Mr. Smith, get a divorce without a third party 
coming in as co-respondent. Neither of you gen- 
tlemen can apply for the divorce with the other as 
co-respondent. Nor can you remarry. You must 
live with one wife between you.” 

Smith and Jones went back to the house and 
played chess for a week. They had become strongly 
attached. At the end of the week they went down 
on the South Bay hunting and fishing, and re- 
mained there three weeks. 

When they came back Mrs. Smith- Jones returned 
to the house. Smith took the back room and ex- 
tension on the second fioor, Jones retained his own 
rooms, and their wife kept hers — the back parlor 
and extension. The solitary family that remained 
soon after removed to Boston. 

Smith had so shaken up Jones that he forgot all 
hife imaginary ailments. The two men became 
partners in several schemes. Fortune smiled on 
Smith as if determined to more than make up for 
the past. Everything he was concerned in suc- 
ceeded marvellously and, without apparent reason, 
Jones was his mascot. 

About a year after a child was born. It was 
named Frank, after Mrs. Smith- Jones’ father. 

When the child was two years old Jones met with 
an accident which was considered trifling at first, 
but resulted fatally from blood poisoning. No one 
mourned him more sincerely than Smith, except, 
perhaps, Mrs. Smith- Jones. 

Mrs. Smith- Jones could not find the will. It had 


84 


tales of marriage and divorce. 


been given to her to keep and she had accidentally 
lost or destroyed it. 

The child inherited the property of Jones, as the 
heir-at-la^, and Mrs. Smith- Jones took her dower. 
A contest was decided in her favor. 

Dick’s ‘‘luck” has continued. He is now almost, 
as “warm” as Jones was when he married. 
Should fortune withdraw her favors and his present 
illness prove fatal, call any one explain why his 
widow is not entitled to dower and Frank to inherit 
his property as well as Jones’ ? He is the son to 
both and each. 


Bigamy with One Wife. 


AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE VAGARIES OF NEW YORK 
DIVORCE LAW. — HOW A REPETITION OF THE MAR- 
RIAGE CEREMONY BETWEEN TWO PEOPLE MAY 
SOMETIMES BE A FELONY PUNISHABLE BY FIVE 
years’ imprisonment. — THE HARDSHIP THAT MAY 
FOLLOW IN THE PATHS OP THE DIVORCED. 



^HEN Janet Keed married Charles Robin- 
llAi/# son, a buyer for a well-known house in 
the hardware business, everybody said 
it was an excellent match for both of them. 
Miss Reed was of the Pennsylvania family famous 
in our Revolutionary history. She had a small in- 
come of her own, to which she added by music 
lessons and playing the organ in a New York church. 
Her father and mother died while she was yet a 
child, her father’s sister — her only aunt, a widow — 
when she was twenty-one. She was tall, stately, 
with all the pride and traditions as well as the 
hereditary beauty of the family, but with a nature 
behind the gentle dignity as sweet and gracious and 
loving as the most exacting husband could desire. 
Her aunt had reared and educated her, but for three 
years she had lived among strangers, and a home 
and a husband came as a crown to her sweet 
W’omanhood. She was twenty-four andRobinsou 


86 TALES OP MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

was twenty-niiiG wliGii they stood before the altar- 
rails of the little Episcopalian church. Both had 
passed beyond the illusions of youth on the subject 
of matrimony. Both had entered upon the contract 
soberly and deliberately, and with a full apprecia- 
tion of its duties and responsibilities. If Hymen’s 
torch did not burn with the fierceness of a first light- 
ing, it was 3"et with a steady glow, based upon mu- 
tual affection, respect, and esteem that promised 
better than the other to outlast the mutations of 
time. 

Kobinson honored his wife above all created 
women. There was to her a gentle deference in his 
manner, a tone in his voice that no woman or man 
had ever before heard from him. Up to his mar- 
riage he had been no better and no worse than the 
usual man of business — without much sentiment, 
coarse at times, decidedly democratic and common- 
place. After marriage there came into his whole 
conduct an indefinable something which gradually 
developed as the years passed into a refinement of 
thought and speech, a regard for the feelings of 
others, which was soon remarked by his intimates. 
This was brought about by the double life — the in- 
fluence of the home life, into which he admitted no 
rude touch of the outside life to enter. Gradually 
this outside life itself became more and more in har- 
mony with the other. That which at first was arti- 
ficial became natural by acquirement, and he soon' 
shunned the very things he formerly courted, simply 
because, as he thought, he had outgrown the taste 
for them. Outgrown ” was not the word, but 


BIGAMY WITH ONE WIFE. 


8? 


then he was a man, and men never know or un- 
derstand what they owe to women, whether the in- 
fluence is consciously or unconsciously exercised. 

Mrs. Eobinson’s only near relative was her cousin, 
Henry Keed. Although flve years younger than 
she, he had conceived for her, while yet an infant, 
one of those strange, mad passions that last till (and 
usually end in tragic) death. It had been treated 
kindly by mother and cousin, as a mere whim, a 
childish fancy ; but her marriage certainly unhing- 
ed his mind for a time if it did not permanently. 
Before the wedding he shipped on a bark bound 
for Pernambuco and nothing was heard of him 
until a year after, when he returned, very much 
changed. 

Kobinson obtained for Eeed a clerkship in the 
hardware Arm and tried to make him feel at home 
at his house. Mrs. Eobinson had never mentioned 
her cousin’s previous infatuation to her husband, 
and, as he seemed cured, she never recalled it. But 
if it lay concealed it was as flerce as ever. 

One day a very heavy buyer from Halifax, who 
had formed a strong liking for Eobinson when the 
latter was ^^on the road,” came to New York on 
his flrst visit and asked as a special favor that 
Eobinson should show him the dens of the lions — 
and the lionesses ; particularly the latter. The re- 
quest could not be refused. Eeed heard it made. 
At the lunch hour he visited a private detective 
agency. For the next forty-eight hours of Eobin- 
son’s life he was shadowed and every sixty seconds 
accounted for, Eeed paid for the report and puf it 


88 


TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 


a:way in his desk. At his leisure he visited two of 
the houses. 

Three months later Robinson was sent to Bel- 
gium and Germany on a special mission which 
meant hard work and perhaps dangerous work. 
Three days after he sailed Reed took his tale to his 
cousin. In brief, it was that Robinson continued 
to support and visit a troll maintained before mar- 
riage. Mrs. Robinson treated it with icy contempt, 
and expressed her opinion of his treachery to his 
friend in a manner that forced his hand and com- 
pelled him to recite all the proofs. 

It is a clever plot,” she said, ‘‘but I know it is 
a tissue of hes. My husband shall not be met with 
it when he retmms. He shall know you not only 
for the base knave that you are, but you shall be 
made powerless to give him a moment’s annoyance 
by conviction of criminal libel before he returns. 
Leave my house, and never speak to me again so 
long as you live.” 

She went to an old and very eminent lawyer, an 
intimate personal friend of her husband, who had 
been also the friend and adviser of her aunt. He 
undertook a thorough investigation, hired detec- 
tives, and promised a complete vindication of Rob- 
inson. Reed called upon him, gave him apparently 
his whole case, and offered every facility to 
prove malice. Robinson’s motive, his companion, 
the fact that it had been a survey of mankind and 
not a visit to a single house, were carefully con- 
cealed by Reed and not suspected by the lawyer, 
who was reluctantly compelled at last to put entire 


BIGAMY WITH ONE WIFE. 


89 


credence in Eeed’s story, which was most diaboli- 
cally and inexplicably mixed with truth and false- 
hood. 

Then he sent for Mrs. Eobinson and told her. 
She refused to accept it as true until she had gone 
v/ith him over every circumstance and every word 
of the testimony, doubting, questioning, scrutiniz- 
ing, suggesting motives. No hypothesis consistent 
with innocence was possible so far as the cir- 
cumstances were known, and it was not in the 
nature of things that there were circumstances 
that would alfect the conclusion. She was not a 
fool. If she had been like the majority of women, 
with no more brains than an ostrich, she would 
have shut eyes and ears and refused to beheve a 
word. But she was a sensible, clear-headed, logical 
woman. However painful the truth might be, she 
did not refuse to accept it. 

How bitter the blow, through what agony she 
passed, only those who have had some experience 
wdth such suffering can appreciate. But her pride 
sustained her, and she consented to an application 
for divorce as a matter of duty. After cabling to 
her husband, ‘*‘1 have applied for a divorce,” she 
locked up the house, left the key with her lawyer, 
and hid herself among strangers. 

Eobinson returned immediately. The lawyer re- 
fused to reveal his wife’s retreat or to hold any 
communication with him. The case was given to 
a referee, and Eobinson, perplexed and amazed at 
the proceedings, which he did not understand and 
could not find a motive for, sat and listened as if ip 


90 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

a dream to the chain of circumstances woven around 
him, until the co-respondent, whom he had never 
before seen was put upon the stand. Then he 
awoke to the fact that it was a conspiracy, but it 
was too late. He made a gallant fight from that 
point, but the report of the referee was emphatic 
and the Court granted the decree. 

Eeed’s connection with the case had not appeared 
in the proceedings and to him Eobinson turned 
without a suspicion of the hand that had dealt the 
blow. Not more than three weeks after the decree 
both men were in bathing at Coney Island. Eeed 
was caught in the undertow and the fright brought 
on cramps. Eobinson, at the risk of his own 
^ life, kept Eeed up until a boat came. Both were 
rescued thoroughly chilled and nearly dead. 
Four days after Eee.d lay dying of pneumonia. 
Then he sent for his cousin’s lawyer, and to him 
and Eobinson gasped out the details of the plot, 
confessing that the co-respondent was a troll about 
to leave the country whom he had bribed to testify 
for a paltry $100. He did not ask for Eobinson’s 
forgiveness, but he wanted his cousin’s. His 
prayers for them to send for her were pitiful, but in 
spite of their efforts even the consolation of seeing 
her was denied to him. 

He had been dead for twenty minutes when the 
two stood facing one another from opposite sides of 
the bed, and the lawyer, with tears rolling down his 
cheeks of shame at the way he had been duped, as 
well as of sympathy with his friends—over the stiff- 
euing corps© ©xplainod tb© plot to Mrs. Eobjp.son. 9 


BIGAMY wiTH ONE WIFE. 


91 


Three days after they were remarried in the same 
church, by the same clergyman, in the presence of 
the same witnesses. 

Eight years passed. Two children had blessed 
the reunion. Robinson had prospered remarkably. 
One day he was brought home by his neighbors. 
He had been stricken by apoplexy ten minutes 
after leaving his house. A second and third stroke 
followed, resulting in death within three days. 

There was no will. Mrs. Robinson applied for 
letters of administration, and her application was 
contested by the son of a cousin of the decedent. 
The case came before the Supreme Court of the 
State of New York. 

The counsel for the cousin produced the evidence 
of the marriage and a certified copy of the divorce, 
with its clause forbidding Robinson to remarry. 

The counsel for Mrs. Robinson offered to prove 
the second marriage. The Court refused permis- 
sion. 

In the course of his remarks, delivering the judg- 
ment of the court, the judge said: 

‘^By the undisputed facts it appears that the de- 
cedent’s wife had been divorced from him and he 
had been forbidden to marry, as. the statute provides 
in every case where a divorce is granted. Really, 
the prohibition was not necessary, and merely in 
Cthe nature of an instruction and friendly warning. 

■ He was still a married man and incapable of entering 
into any save an illegal and bigaipous second 
marriage within the jurisdiction of this State. If 
any such ceremony was performed it was void. 
The plaintiff in this action has lived with him for 


92 TALES OP MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

eight years past and borne him two children, but 
she has been merely his mistress and these two 
children are bastards. [See also Moore vs» Moore, 
City Com't of Brooklyn, Nelson, J.]” 

Every dollar’s worth of property of which Kobin- 
son died seized was taken by the cousin’s son. Mrs. 
Kobinson died in less than a year, of shame and 
grief and a broken heart — for such hearts as hers are 
broken. The elder child is now in the almshouse 
on Randall’s Island ; the younger is in one of the 
trenches of the Potter’s Field. 

Let no one rail at the words of the judge or find 
^fault with his interpretation of the law. He had no 
other course open to him. Though his language 
was brutal, it was accurate. Had Robinson been 
living he could have been indicted and convicted of 
bigamy. The refusal of the Judge to permit proof of 
the second marriage was an act of mercy, for had it 
been offered it would have been his duty to order 
Mrs. Robinson’s arrest, and the District Attorney’s 
to have indicted her, under section 301 of the 
Criminal Code. Her punishment would have been 
five years’ imprisonment in Sing Sing and a fine of 
$1,000. He mercifully allowed her to die' in peace 
and spared her children the additional brand of the 
State Prison. 

Few people will believe that this Judge did not 
err in his law; but let the sceptic turn to the 92d 
volume of the New York Supreme Court Reports, 
page 146 (People vs. Faber), and study a similar 
case, fought step by step to the Court of Appeals, 
and from there to the Executive Chamber at Al- 


BIGAMY WITH ONE WIFE. OS 


bany. Here is the law as laid down by the Court 
of last and final resort; 


A person against whom a decree of divorce has 
been granted by the courts of this State, who, during 
the lifetime of the plaintiff, marries again within 
this State, is guilty 6t bigamy. He is ‘ a person 
having a husband or wife living,’ within 2 R. S., 678, 
§ 8 .” 


Faber married again. He was indicted for big- 
amy and convicted. 

The Supreme Court upheld the conviction. So 
did the Court of Appeals. The Governor refused 
pardon. Faber was sent to Sing Sing to serve a 
five years’ sentence. 

Faber ^did not remarry Mrs. Faber, but that is 
aliunde. The personality of the woman, or whom 
he married, was not considered by the Court. The 
only question before the Court was whether Faber 
had gone through a second marriage ceremony. 
After the divorce Mrs.* Faber was no longer a mar- 
ried woman. She was femme sole, qualified to 
marry. Faber remained a married man, incapable 
of marrying again, for ^^he had a wife living,” al- 
though Mrs. Faber had no husband living. The 
marriage bond had been dissolved only so far as it 
burdened the woman; his bonds remained intact 
and unaltered, said the Court of Appeals. For him 
to contract a second marriage with any woman was 
bigamy. For any single woman cognizant of his 
first marriage to marry him was bigamy, under sec- 


{>4 TALES OP MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

tion 301. Mrs. Faber was a single woman, neces- 
sarily cognizant of the first marriage, and she, above 
all other women, could not marry him without com- 
mitting bigamy (Sec. 301). Nor, if he had selected 
her as a consort, would his marriage to her have 
been different from his marriage to any other single 
woman? Any second ceremony on his part was 
bigamy. 

This is the decision of the Court of Appeals and 
the Supreme Court, and all inferior courts are bound 
by it. 

In the City Court of Brooklyn, in the case of Moore 
vs. Moore, where the parties had remarried after hav- 
ing been divorced, tried before Chief Judge Neilson, 
it was 

“JZeZcZ. That, as the wife knew of the provision for- 
bidding her husband to remarry during her lifetime, 
and as the decree in which that provision was con- 
tained had been obtained upon her motion, the 
second marriage of these previously divorced parties 
was illegal and void; the plaintiff was not the legit- 
imate wife of the husband, she having married 
him while he was under a disabihty to remarry; 
and as she was merely his mistress the children 
were illegitimate.” 

A judge must accept the doctrines laid down by 
the highest court. 

If Mr. and Mrs. Eobinson had received their just 
deserts they would have been convicted of bigamy 
and each one sentenced to five years’ imprisonment 
.in the State prison. They were criminals, who by 


feiOAMV WITH ONE WIFfi. 


% 


accident escaped the punishment for their felony, 
and they do not deserve the sympathy of the law- 
abiding. 1 

But may not obedience to the law be a higher 
crime against society than resistance by force and 
arms? 


How Susan was Beaten. 


AND HER DIVORCED HUSBAND LEGALLY MARRIED IN 
THIS STATE. — A CASE FROM THE SUPERIOR COURT 
RECORDS THAT ILLUSTRATES AVHAT MAY BE DONE 
WHEN THE LAWYER IS SHREWD AND HE HAS A 
CLEVER MANAGING CLERK. 



HEN the Superior Court handed down the 
papers in the suit of ‘‘ Farley vs. Farley, 
divorce granted,’’ the defendant remark- 
ed that he didn’t care. However true his 
remarks may have been then, before three years 
passed he cursed the Court, the referee and the de- 
cree so thoroughly and so roundly that if commin- 
atory words ever had any effect, something would 
certainly have happened to one or the other of these 
three, if not to all. 

He said, and it may have been true, that it was 
a job put up by Susan in order that she might 
marry a former lover ” — which he did not care to 
spoil because he was ‘‘only too glad to get rid of 
her.” Certainly Mrs. Farley married again within 
a fortnight from the date of the decree ; but with 
the merits of the case, not one of the friends of 
either party ever cared to trouble themselves. 
Farley's experience, in what the law books call 


HOW SUSAN WAS BEATEN. 


97 


his first “venture,” soured him exceedingly in re- 
gard to the other sex. For a year or two he eschew- 
ed women and society, attending night and day to 
his business, which was extensive and with many 
ramifications throughout the State. 

Fate threw him for a time in the close companion- 
ship of a sweet and noble-minded woman. It did 
more, for it gave him what is given to few men be- 
fore marriage — full opportunity how worthy she 
was of honor and esteem. Her perfect truthfulness 
and candor, her broad charity and uprightness 
seemed, to his prejudiced mind, something border- 
ing on the miraculous. Reverence includes fear, for 
the word comes from the Sanscrit, sev, “to fear,” 
but his love for her, which grew to be a master 
passion, was really modified and colored by that 
reverence which is given to beings from another 
world. 

Farley had in him all the elements of a really 
noble nature, to which adverse circumstances had 
never permitted development. She understood and 
appreciated the good that was in him, and it pleased 
her to see it develop and bear fruit. She was not 
blind to his faults, but she believed that the wheat 
would grow up and choke the tares — a mistake 
women often make. 

No word of love had been spoken between them, 
perhaps no consciousness of it had come to either, 
when one day he met his wife’s brother : 

“ I hear you are sweet on Miss Drake,” the latter 
observed, “and I want to give you a brother-in- 
lawly vvarning. If you forget that you are a married 


98 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

man Susan does not, and if you marry again she will 
make it hot for you. She has never forgiven your 
refusal to lend her that money.” 

Farley consulted his lawyer— not in his office ; 
that would have been a dollar a word, and the 
words would have been non-committal ; but after 
dinner and over a quart of fifty-year-old sack. 

“You are in a very curious position,” he said. 
“ You are a married man. You have a wife living. 
For you to marry again in this State is bigamy.” 

“ But my wife has married again.” 

“ She has been released from her contract. Yours 
remains in full force. She does not come into the 
question. Consider your own case without refer- 
ence to hers.” 

“ Can I not marry in some other State ?” 

“You are a married man. It would be bigamy 
anywhere in the world. The courts of another 
State cannot extend or modify the decree of the 
courts of this State, and the courts of this State 
have not divorced you from your wife ; only your 
wife from you. You might go to Canada or New 
Jersey, marry there and come away without any 
one caring to prosecute you ; but no court here or 
there would consider the marriage legal. You are 
a married man here and you must be recognized 
by their courts as married. This is the new law as 
laid down recently by the Court of Appeals. You 
cannot be punished for a crime except within the 
jurisdiction of the sovereign where the crime was 
committed ; but such a crime would not help you. 
It would satisfy the majority of women. Any kind 


HOW SUSAN WAS BEATEN. 


99 


of ceremony — legal or illegal — will. But it would 
not make a woman your wife.” 

“ Can I not get a divorce 

‘^On what ground? What cause have you for 
one ? The application must state some reason.” 

Then there is no hope for me ? ” 
do not see the faintest. You can have the 
form but not the substance.” 

All the evil in Farley’s nature came uppermost 
for a day or two. Then it changed to melancholy 
under Miss Drake’s gentle influence. She wondered 
at the change in him, but said nothing. He dared 
not confide to her the cause. 

One day, when the fit of the blues was very 
strong, he dropped into a seat at Nash & Crook’s 
and ordered a half -bottle. Looking up wearily he 
saw opposite him one whom he knew — a news- 
paper man — eating his bread and milk. 

Now, this newspaper man was not a tireless and 
enterprising reporter,” neitherwise ^^a gifted and 
brilliant journalist,” leastwise ^^a stern and digni- 
fied editor.” The Press Club knew him not, no 
free list ever contained his name, and what he 
wrote was literally used only to fill up a column” 
or to justify reading matter to advertisements.” 
His were the published and unpublished ‘^answers 
to correspondents” — particularly the unpublished. 
For nearly a quarter of a century his ^intelligence 
office ” had occupied a begrudged 5x5 in the darkest 
corner of a dingy loft, answering two or three hun- 
dred letters daily, until he had become an animated 
index or table of contents. He knew nothing of 


100 


TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DITORCE. 


himself. He merely pointed out where to find any- 
thing that was a matter of record. His position on 
the press corresponded precisely to the position in 
literature of the catalogue in a library to the books 
that surrounded it ; but he had a kindly heart — ho 
had to have for his thankless work — and his friend’s 
face showed suffering. 

‘‘What’s the matter, George ?” he asked. 

“ That I am married, yet have no wife. That I 
can’t marry again, while my wife can marry and is 
married to another man. It’s something you can- 
not help me in. The contract is too big for you.” 

“Then it’s the first one I ever struck. Stop 
drinking that vile stuff and come up to my den. I 
know just what you want, without another word. 
I may be able to help you.” 

Farley submitted without a ray of hope.* The 
Table of Contents began consulting indices, envel- 
opes and scrap-books. At the end of fifteen min- 
utes he turned to Farley. 

“Listen carefully to what I say. If you could 
get a divorce in any State in the Union that would 
be vahd in this, you could be married in this State.” 

“But I cannot.” 

“Listen. A divorce granted in another State is 
vahd in this, provided that the court granting the 
divorce has jurisdiction over both the parties to it 
and the subject-matter. The Constitution demands 
full faith and credit in each State to the judicial 
proceedings of every other State. Here’s the deci- 
sion quoted from the 95 U. S.” 

“ What cause can I aUege ?” 


HOW STJSAN WAS BEATEN. 


101 


only one out of the thirty-eight States of 
this Union can you get relief. The State of Kansas 
makes it a sufficient reason for granting a divorce 
that a divorce has been granted against the ap- 
plicant. Here is the statute.” 

Farley’s face brightened. Even the Table of Con- 
tents felt a thrill of enjoyment at the change. 

Don’t hurry to a conclusion. If you go to Kan- 
sas and apply for a divorce your wife may refuse to 
contest it. It will be vahd in Kansas, but not here. 
The Kansas courts cannot meddle with the marital 
relations of a citizen of and in this State. If prop- 
erly advised she will pay no attention to it, and you 
will only be a step better off. You can marry in 
Kansas and bring your wife here. Your marriage 
will be legal here, but you can be sentenced to fine 
and imprisonment for making it.” 

Is that the best to be hoped for ?” 

‘^No. Get your wife to Kansas by trick and de- 
vice. Notify her that a fortune has been left her in 
Denver for her to come and get, and while she is 
passing through Kansas in the cars serve her with 
the papers. She is then within the jurisdiction of 
the court. Get your divorce, bring it back here 
and invite the Judges and District-Attorney to 
attend your wedding. The United States will 
protect you.” 

But how is it that Blank, who is one of the ablest 
lawyers in the State, did not know this ? ” 

Because his indices were imperfect. Perhaps he 
trusted to his memory. It’s asking too much of 
one’s memory to recall the special statutes of thirty- 


102 TALES OF Marriage and divorce. 

eight States. Go to him and tell him what I say. 
Give him these memoranda and you will be all 
right.” 

Blank verified the memoranda. ‘^This is cor- 
rect,” he remarked, but the trouble will be to get 
your wife served with the papers. Unless she con- 
tests the suit and comes within the jurisdiction of 
the Kansas court you cannot come back to New 
York and marry. Yom friend is right about the 
^ trick and device ’ to get her to do it ; but I cannot 
lend myself to anything of that kind. How much 
are you willing to spend to get it ? ” 

‘^Five thousand dollars.” 

' Take this letter to Jones. He will succeed in 
freeing you if any one can. Nothing will please 
him better that to defeat your wife’s mahce.” 

Farley, following Jones’ advice, went to Leaven- 
worth, bought a small house on the outskirts, put 
in a housekeeper, slept five nights there and re- 
turned to New York, leaving his divorce in the 
hands of a lawyer of that city. 

The problem then was to get ‘‘Susan” within 
the jurisdiction of the Kansas court. Many plans 
were considered and all were abandoned as im- 
practicable. While he had kept from her all 
knowledge of what had been done, he had learned 
from his free-spoken brother-in-law that she would 
never accept service of summons or appear by 
attorney in any suit brought in another State, as 
she had had the law fully explained to her and 
understood that no court in any other State could 
fully release her husband from his bonds in this 


HOW SUSAK WAS BEATEN. 


103 


State unless she was a party to the suit. It was a 
clerk in Jones’ office that found the solution. 

Susan’s second husband was the manager of a 
large furniture factory. Jones made his acquaint- 
ance, gained his confidence, and finally, on behalf 
of a syndicate of capitalists who proposed putting 
up a large furniture factory in Leavenworth,” 
offered him $500 if he would take four weeks’ 
instead of two weeks’ vacation, go to Leavenworth, 
examine the field and report whether he thought it 
a wise investment.” 

The conspirators took their chances of Susan 
going with him ; but these were small. Jones, who 
thoroughly understood the female mind, had taken 
care to sow some seeds of doubt and mistrust of her 
second husband, and he made assurance double 
sure ” by hiring a woman to play the part of wife 
to one of the capitalists,” and to have Barton 
(Susan’s second husband) asked to act as her escort 
as far as Kansas City. If Susan had had any 
hesitation about sharing her husband’s pleasure 
trip, this removed it. She went with him, and 
three days after their arrival in Leavenworth the 
summons and complaint were served on her. Then, 
dazed, she acted unadvisedly, for she paid no 
attention to them, and Farley obtained his decree 
by default. Barton did his work well, made his 
report, received his fee of $500 and a special letter 
of thanks, and to this day, in aU probabihty, neither 
Mr. nor Mrs. Barton have had a suspicion that the 
report — which was adverse — had any connection 
with Farley’s suit, or that his engagement to make 
it was not bona-fide. 


104 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

Farley sold his house in Leavenworth, shook the 
dust of Kansas from his feet, and returned with a 
certified copy of the decree and of the proceedings. 
His total actual residence in the State was sixteen 
days ; his constructive residence fourteen months. 
He might have reduced the time, but he was de- 
termined there should be no flaw in his divorce. 
His total expenses were a trifle under $4,000. 

He called on the judge of the Superior Court who 
had granted the decree in favor of his wife. 

This is merely a piece of waste paper,” said the 
judge, glancing at the certified copy. 

Will you kindly examine it carefully ? ” asked 
Farley. My wife was in Leavenworth when the 
complaint was served. Here is a copy of the de- 
cision of the United States Supreme Court in the 
case of Pennoyer vs. Neff. I have no desire to an- 
tagonize you in any way, but I wish to remarry, if I 
may.” 

The judge examined the papers, asked a few 
questions, which were frankly answered, and then 
said : 

Mr. Farley, you have beaten me and the courts 
of this State as well. The Kansas court had full 
jurisdiction, and your divorce must be recognized 
by all the courts of this State. It is their impera- 
tive duty, under the Federal Constitution. You are 
a free man, and may marry anywhere and at any 
time.” 

Farley married Miss Drake, and never regretted 
his second venture in matrimony. Nor do I think 
she has ever regretted marrying him. A more 
perfect union than theirs is not known. 


THE WAY OF THE MARRIED IS HARD. 


A LESSON FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF JOHN LAWRENCE 
WITH THREE LAWFUL WIVES, AND MRS. VAN ZANDT 
POLHEMUS WITH TWO LAWFUL HUSBANDS THAT MAY 
SERVE AS A WARNING TO THE WISE. 



m 


HEN John Lawrence, jr., died in 1883 he 
left to his only child, John Lawrence third 
^ of the name, aged 28, a conservative busi- 
ness always good for 140,000 yearly even 
in the hardest times, a score of excellent paying 
tenements in the Thirteenth WarcJ, and several 
large blocks of railway stocks. John was a good 
fellow and deserved his luck, everybody said. This 
was one of the very rare exceptions when universal 
opinion was right. 

Lawrence was and is one of the handsomest men 
in New York — a city famed for the beauty of the 
men and women. But his beauty is seldom noticed 
except by strangers. The gentleness of his manner, 
the sensitiveness of his mind, the consideration for 
others in every act, the broad and catholic charity 
of his thoughts, the sweet seriousness with which 
he regards life, the earnestness and sincerity of his 
conversation, and above all the atmosphere of 
personal affection which seems to enfold like an 


106 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

am^a all with whom he comes in contact, so charm 
his friends that they seldom if ever think of his 
personal appearance. It is the man himself they 
admire, not his wrappings. 

Nine years ago he married Elva Spencer, the 
youngest of eight daughters, whose education and 
maintenance in society had kept their father from 
a competence. His wife brought Lawrence only 
her good sense and sweetness as a marriage portion, 
but he needed no fortune, and he has never failed 
on each recurring anniversary of his wedding to 
offer a sacrifice to the three sisters for their kind- 
ness in giving him the prize so seldom conferred 
upon mortals — a perfect helpmate. No man living 
has for his wife and family a deeper devotion, a 
tenderer affection than John Lawrence. No wife 
and family have more or better reason to adore a 
husband and father than Mrs. Lawrence and her 
two boys. 

And yet — . And yet — . This is not aU. It never 
is. 

Is it worth while telling the rest and spoihng the 
picture for the half-baked and fat-witted? Yes, 
for it is a true illustration of the normal man, and 
therefore a lesson to the wise. It is not an exception, 
an abnormal instance, but a fair representation of 
what women must face and men must acknowledge 
as the truth. This keeping our noses in the sand 
that one may not see or be seen — ^like so many 
ostriches — has become ridiculous. 

It is Lawrence’s fate to fall in love with thirteen 
women every year, and remember each one for two 


THE WAY OP THE MARRIED IS HARD. 107 

weeks. Then he forgets that they ever existed. 
They not only remember him while spending the 
$1,000 which he invariably presents to each one, but 
forever. A woman could not forget him in one 
life. He cannot recall the name or the apppearance 
of the last but one. Yet he is in love with each for 
the moment. It may be an ear, a curl, a foot, an eye, 
the curve of a waist, or the mere size of the woman, 
that has attracted him. He may be disenchanted 
when he hears the voice or the grammar, or the 
illusion may last, as it has in one or two cases, for a 
full fortnight. While it lasts, it is love — and love 
only. The ignorant will dispute this. The wise 
know it to be true, and it is for the wise not the 
ignorant that we have scripture. The unwise rave 
and imagine vain things, and their feet go down 
unto sheol. 

No husband loves his wife, in the true meaning 
and accurate definition of ^^love.” Love dies with 
the kiss, as every philosopher and thmker from 
Solomon to Swinburne has testified. Love is an 
elemental emotion, not a compound. It has affinity 
to other emotions, and will combine with affection, 
devotion, adoration, respect, esteem, admiration, 
hope, fear, and many others to form compounds, 
as oxygen combines with other gases, or gold with 
other metals ; but unhke these we have no special 
names for emotional compounds — such as we have 
for physical compounds— water and air or bronze 
and brass. By and of itself love has for a physical 
manifestation only action for the pure pleasure of 
the action, or ^‘action whose end is in itself ” — and 


108 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

this action, whenever met, is always the outward 
expression of inward emotion called love. John 
Lawrence illustrated its action on the free man 
more perfectly, perhaps, than it is usually shown, 
but men who would not fall in love with thirteen 
women yearly, if they had his means of disenchant- 
ment and opportunities, would be a new lace. 

Mrs. Lawrence ? It was years before she found 
it out. The truth was filtered to her slowly — so 
slowly there was no shock. She learned with it 
another thing — something few women know. It is 
that no wife loves her husband. The combination 
made a cocktail that was not unpleasant and — she 
shut her eyes when she drank it. She was as wise 
as she was sweet and lovable. She did not seek 
what she did not wish to find. She had her hus- 
band’s affection, devotion, respect, and esteem. She 
had read the Arabian Nights and did not want im- 
possibihties or roc’s eggs. She was no baby, to cry 
for the moon. 

In 1885 Lawrence struck a snag. His luck with 
private corresponding clerks for many months had 
been abnormally poor. Sober men were not trust- 
worthy, and trustworthy men were not sober. His 
business manager advised him to try a young 
woman, twenty-fom years old, who had been strong- 
ly recommended ; and he did. She was all that had 
been said of her. Neat, quiet, faithful, intelligent, 
reserved, she gave such service as he had never be- 
fore received. She could read her notes, she asked 
no questions, and she never blundered over a classi- 
cal quotation or current allusion. Her education 


THE WAY OF THE MARRIED IS HARD. 109 

had been thorough. In three months her salary 
had been raised from $10 to $12, and then to $15, the 
price paid to good men. Then he raised it to $20. 
She thanked him, but asked that it might remain 
at $15. He understood her reason and recalled the 
order. 

One night he ate too much Strasbourg pie and the 
next day he did not feel like work, and did feel in 
sympathy with the Preacher — AU was vanity and 
a striving after wind.” He looked at Priscilla, and 
as he looked he forgot his pessimism. How could 
he praise the dead which are dead more than the 
living which are yet ahve? ” That protean feeling 
which is the main-spring of all human action — the 
student’s pursuit of knowledge alike with the lover’s 
pursuit of woman — which acts upon the mind as 
heat acts upon the earth ; without which the one 
would die even as the other — awoke from its light 
slumber of a few weeks. He had often noticed 
when standing beside her that her soft grey eyes 
were on a level with his own. She must be over 
five feet ten, yet every line and curve of her perfect 
figure were as fine as if she had been one of 
Nature’s fifty-eight or sixty-inch gems of rare 
price. What a grand, strong face it was that turn- 
ed slowly to meet his ! Life was worth hving if 
only to look upon it. The words of the Preacher 
sounded fainter and farther away, and the Song of 
Songs came ringing in his ears. His heart glowed 
with thanksgiving that the pomegranates were in 
fiower. 

But Priscilla was not in love with him. Properly 


110 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

and accurately speaking, his love vras not prized by 
her, for vv^omen rarely love men. For the first 
time in his life he was at a loss. Other women had 
always thrilled or blushed when his eyes looked 
down into theirs. Hers met his with perfect frank- 
ness, confidence, and affection. There was no ful- 
crum for love. Large women are capable of greater 
emotion, but they are not so easily ruffled by it as 
small women are. He had no secrets from her. She 
knew his hfe better even than he did, for she could 
call the roll of those he had kissed and dismissed for 
a year past, and all his recent love letters were in 
her handwriting. He might forget, but she was 
paid to remember. Knowing his weakness and his 
strength she yet held him in the highest esteem, lik- 
ing him better than any man she ever before met, 
but the idea that he might love her never crossed her 
mind. His heart fevers amused and puzzled her. 
Wouldn’t chlorine and potash do for this mental 
malaria what sulphur and quinia did for the physi- 
cal, she wondered. 

There is no pleasure in getting, only in seeking. 
It lies in the battle, not the booty ; in playing the 
game, not in pocketing the stakes ; in wooing, not 
winning. Action for the pure pleasure of the 
action finds its perfect embodiment in the search 
for Truth, which theological writers call Love of 
God, because the object can never be attained and 
the pleasure is never marred by the discovery that 
what we were seeking was not what we wanted. 

For two months Lavrrence gave himself up to the 
new pursuit before PrisciUa became conscious of it, 


THE WAY OF THE MARRIED IS HARD. Ill 

and this was probably the happiest two months of 
his life. Then the reason why there were no more 
love letters to write and no more intrigues to be at- 
tended to gradually came to her. The knowledge 
was not unpleasant, for this was love in subjection. 
Any woman might well be pleased at rousing such 
an emotion in such a man. 

His love for her was compounded with affection, 
respect, and admiration. No thought came of hav- 
ing her join the procession of women. His affection 
would not permit him to pull her down from her 
high estate and he could not have done so if he had 
tried. Love never looks to results or consequences. 
It is action for the pure pleasure of action — pursuit 
of women for the pure pleasure of the pursuit, but 
there was nothing in his pursuit modified so strong- 
ly by other emotions to alarm even a weak-minded 
woman, which she was not. 

One day about three months after she had be- 
come aware of his feeling — when they talked freely 
and frankly of it, like sensible people who had con- 
fidence in themselves, she said to him: ^Hf you 
were poor, I would not only gladly marry you, but I 
would gladly support you. No toil would be too 
hard. If that is love — I hardly think it is — I love 
you better than I love myself. Does not that con- 
tent you?” 

^‘^But as I am,” he urged. ^Hf I can make you 
my wife, will you not marry me ? ” 

She shook her head slowly, don’t think so. I 
might, but it is not probable. I should prefer to 
remain as we are — then there would be no rude 


112 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DtVORCE. 

awakening to the dream. It would merely fade 
away. Let us talk of something else.” 

Lawrence owned a summer residence at Bayport, 
Connecticut. One afternoon he took the train to 
Stamford, the county seat, and asked a lawyer if he 
could get him a divorce from his wife, without her 
knowledge. 

Yes, but it will have no vahdity except within 
the jurisdiction of the comrt granting it and in New 
Hampshire. It will be of no service to you.” 

Lawrence, who had studied law as a part of his 
education and knew what he wanted, smiled and 
replied : Go ahead and get it. I will pay $500 

provided no one who knows me gets wind of it. I 
would not have my wife know of it for all I am 
worth.” 

In less than two months, he received the decree. 
In the interval he had obtained a reluctant promise 
from Priscilla that when he could make her his 
lawful wife she would consent to marry him. He 
said nothing to her about the divorce, but asked her 
to take a trip with him to Stamford, which is ap 
hour’s ride from New York. He carried her 
straight to the judge and explained to him that she 
was willing to marry him if she would be his law- 
ful wife. Was his divorce valid ? The judge 
assured her that Lawrence was free to marry any 
woman, and that a marriage then and there entered 
into could not be questioned nor could its validity 
be impeached in any court in the land. Surprised, 
overborne by Lawrence’s earnestness and the judge’s 
assurances, she consented and the two returned to 


THE WAY OP THE MARRIED IS HARD. 113 

New York mah and wife. On the train she said 
that she did not feel fuUy confident as to the New 
York law concerning her position. 

^‘Ido not wish you to live with me until you 
are,” was his reply. From the Grand Central depot 
he drove straight to a lawyer and directed him to 
bring a suit in Priscilla’s name 'for a separate 
maintenance and allowance. The suit was brought. 
It was a short cause and settled in ten minutes. 
Lawrence’s counsel denied the validity of the 
marriage, but admitted that it took place in 
Connecticut before the magistrate who had 
previously granted him a divorce. His point was 
that the New York court could not accept the 
divorce as valid, or admit that he was free to 
marry. 

^^The only question before this court,” remarked 
the judge, ^^is the defendant’s status in the State of 
Connecticut at the time of this marriage ; for, if 
the marriage was valid in Connecticut, it must be 
valid here. To decide this question one cannot go 
outside of the Connecticut law, and we must, under 
the federal constitution, give full faith and credit to 
the decision of the Connecticut court regarding his 
individual status before it when within its jurisdic- 
tion. It had no jurisdiction over his non-resident 
wife and could not annul his contract with her. 
The divorce has no validity here, but the marriage 
has, because its validity does not depend upon the 
divorce here, but upon the legality of a contract 
entered into in Connecticut under the laws of that 
State. The plainthf is his lawful wife in Connect!- 


114 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

cut, and that makes her his lawful wife in every 
State in the Union.’’ 

Priscilla’s doubts vanished. Lawrence lost a 
private secretary and gained a second legal wife. 
Love died with the kiss, but the affection between 
them continued to increase. She did not ask to 
become a ^‘leader of fashion,” she did not demand 
that he should abandon his other family, she was 
not jealous of Elva, and she insisted upon living in 
a modest flat and well within the $2,500 'per year 
he had settled upon her, which was all she would 
accept. In all this she was abnormal, a phe- 
nomenon ; but thip story is that of John Lawrence, 
who was not out of the common. 

What induced John Lawrence to make a full con- 
fession to Elva of his second marriage, about six 
months after it had been entered into, no one wiU 
ever know. It is more than probable that he never 
knew himself ; but perhaps the unconscious motive 
was found in Priscilla’s remark that she would 
prefer to hear from him rather than from strangers 
of an amour with another woman. 

How Elva might have taken the news from 
strangers can only be conjectured. How she took 
it from Lawrence he told me. She did not cry. * 
She uttered no reproaches. But she gave him a 
tongue lashing such as he had never dreamed her 
or any woman capable of, ordered him out of the 
hQuse, and applied to the Common Pleas for a divorce 
with alimony. Lawrence employed an able counsel. 
An inferior or commonplace lawyer would have 
put in bar the divorce and been beaten, as lawyers 


. THE WAY OF THE MARRIED IS HARD. 115 

are beaten every day, for the divorce could not be 
received or accepted as valid by the New York 
court, the Connecticut court granting it having no 
jurisdiction over Mrs. Lawrence the first, and no 
power to deprive her of any rights which she en- 
joyed as a citizen of New York. 

In his answer to the complaint, Lawrence 
admitted all the allegations contained therein ; but 
put in bar the plea that the co-respondent was his 
lawful wife ; that she had been so declared by a 
decree of the Supreme Court, and that he had 
married her September 23, 1884, in Stamford, Con- 
necticut, he being by a decree of the Supreme Court 
of Connecticut an unmarried man within its 
jurisdiction and eligible to marriage. He further 
alleged that no suit could properly lie, as a lawful 
wife could not be made a co-respondent, nor could 
lawful marital relations be criminal, and he prayed 
that the suit might be dismissed. It was dismissed, 
the court saying : 

^‘That the defendant, at the time of the marriage' 
to the co-respondent, was permitted by the laws of 
Connecticut to marry her within the jurisdiction of 
that State is not disputed. The Court of Appeals 
said in a very recent case (Moore vs, Hegeman, 92 
N. Y., 526): ^ Where a marriage is valid by the 

laws of another State its validity cannot be question- 
ed in this State. Thus, even if persons who cannot 
legally marry in this State go to another State, the 
laws of which permit them to marry, and marry 
there, such marriage is valid in this State.’ AU 
inferior courts are bound by this rule laid down by 


116 


TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 


the highest appellate tribunal, and the case before 
this court is precisely the same as that. The 
defendant and co-respondent could not legally 
marry in this State ; they went to Connecticut, the 
laws of which permitted them to legally marry, they 
married there and returned here, and the courts of 
this State cannot question the validity of that 
marriage. The defendant and the co-respondent 
are lawful husband and wife, and their conversation 
cannot be criminal. The case is dismissed.’’ 

Beaten but not dismayed, Elva brought suit for a 
separation, basing it on the only one of the four 
causes which would apply: cruel and inhuman 
treatment,” the cruelty being his second marriage. 
The judge dismissed the case, after hearing her 
testimony only, with a sharp reprimand to her 
attorneys. “The most devoted and affectionate 
husband she had ever known,” and “one who had 
never used to his wife or child a single unkind 
word,” could not have the stigma put on him of 
cruel and inhuman treatment simply because he had 
availed himself of his undoubted legal right in Con- 
necticut to marry another woman. 

During all this time Lawrence had regularly 
placed to his wife’s credit in the bank the $400 
weekly which she always had for housekeeping. 
His reply to the refusal of the judge to order an 
allowance for Mrs. Lawrence’s separate maintenance 
was to place $20,800 to her credit in her bank for 
the ensuing year. Then he called on her. Her 
passion had exhausted, her defeats had wearied her, 
and she received him. Ouq strong reason was that 


THE WAY OF THE MARRIED IS HARD. 117 

she had learned that his divorce had been obtained 
without alleging any misconduct on her part — 
which it had never occurred to him to make clear. 
Three months after, they were thoroughly re- 
conciled without Priscilla’s name having been 
mentioned and without any allusion to the second 
marriage. However reluctantly, Elva accepted the 
situation. 

In medias res Lawrence had made the acquaint- 
ance of Mrs. Van Zandt Polhemus, a cousin of Pris- 
cilla. Under the latter’s reserve and pride there was 
one small spark of feminine vanity. The daughter 
of parents who had given her an excellent educa- 
tion but could give her nothing more, she felt some 
little satisfaction once, when Lawrence was speak- 
ing of his uncle’s partner, at being able to mention 
that the partner,” Ezekiel Pratt, a famous million- 
aire builder, was her father’s brother, and that his 
daughter Susie, who had inherited the fortune and 
married Van Zandt Polhemus, was the only cousin 
she had, although she had not met her for ten 
years. 

Lawrence urged her to call on her cousin, which 
Priscilla did. Mrs. Polhemus returned the call and 
invited both to dinner. She questioned and cross 
questioned Lawrence, whom she had long desired to 
know intimately, upon the manner in which he had 
obtained two lawful wives, until she thoroughly 
understood the statutes, decisions, and modes of 
procedure. It was not until the second or third 
time that she invited him to a tete-d-tete in her bou- 
doir, to explain some points, that he comprehended 


118 


TALES OF MAKRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 


how pleasant the subject was to her, or the possibili- 
ties before him. 

Mrs. Polhemus was thirty, langtry lank with the 
potentiahty of corpulency, not a beauty but comely, 
more fair than hrun, with intensely black eyes that 
fairly blazed with mesmeric fire, and a very fine neck 
wisely but not too well displayed. Her husband 
was red-nosed and red-haired, with one of the vilest 
tempers known. He had been black-balled on ac- 
count of it at half a dozen clubs, and never could 
find a partner at whist or any other game, except 
among strangers. He had no particular family, he 
had no money, he had been baptized Isaac, and it 
was an open secret when she married him that she 
despised him. They had been inarried ten years, 
without children. He was the second member of a 
great rubber firm and enjoyed the distinction of 
being the best judge of green rubber in the world. 
He would give a Monricu points and then discount 
him, it was said. 

Lawrence was the man for whom she had waited 
ten years — for whom she had waited and longed 
until every feeling of womanly reserve had been 
burned up. She was tired of lovers who sneaked 
and skulked to obtain her favor. Lawrence’s act 
in openly marrying Priscilla and his conquest of the 
law was a knight’s victory over a dragon. Here at 
last was a man in every sense of the word— and her 
lover he must be. 

With Lawrence it was very different. It was his 
first real intrigue upon equal terms, and he trem- 
bled and di’ew back, as timid as some of the women 


THE WAY OP THE MARRIED IS HARD. 119 

he had wooed and filled with the same vague and 
undefined fears. But her eyes mesmerized him, 
and the fire in them lighted a flame in his own that 
made Priscilla tremble. The past had been child’s 
play to this. 

Polhemus had to go to Manaos. There had come 
a crisis in the rubber trade when fortunes could be 
doubled and quadrupled in a year by those who 
could buy it green from the Indians on the Solomoens 
and upper Yapura. The leap from fifty-five to ninety- 
nine cents per pound had expended its force and 
reached the smallest camp on the headwaters of the 
Tapajos. To buy it green without knowledge was 
ruin, with knowledge a fortune ; and it was also to 
corner the next year’s market on the cured. 

Mrs. Polhemus had never been a stickler for the 
proprieties, although she conformed outwardly, but 
she insisted upon lawful marriage between 
Lawrence and herself — ‘^not necessarily for publica- 
tion but as a guarantee of good faith.” Two days 
after Polhemus started for South America she 
brought action in the Connecticut courts for divorce 
on grounds of desertion and insisted that Lawrence 
should get a divorce in Connecticut from Priscilla. 
It was all to be done secretly. She wished merely 
the approval of her own conscience, she said, and 
Heaven’s blessing on a lawful union. This was 
pure pretence. She wanted as great an exertion by 
him as Priscilla had had, and she wanted a new 
sensation. Lovers had become an abomination of 
desolation to her. A new husband was a new earth, 
if not a new heaven. 


120 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

The decrees were granted by the court and they 
were secretly married at New Haven. An apart- 
ment was hired in one of the high-priced buildings 
and placed in charge of a housekeeper, for their 
marriage must not be suspected. She wished to 
steal the sugar she owned and score a point over 
Priscilla. Stolen waters are sweetest. 

At the second meeting Mrs. Polhemus-Lawrence, 
for she was now the lawful wife of two husbands, 
called her junior husband’s attention to a massive 
gold frame on the wall. It had their marriage 
certificate in the center with his divorce on the right 
and hers on the left, artistically arranged. ^Hf Mrs. 
Grundy should ever discover our little picture I will 
invite her attention to that work of art, law, and 
religion,” was her explanation. 

Lawrence had grown tired in a fortnight of a wife 
for whom he had neither affection nor respect, but 
she did not tire of him. The two afternoon calls a 
week which she insisted upon as her right were 
hours of penance such as he had never before ex- 
perienced or even imagined. He dared not break 
with her, for she was fiercely and passionately 
jealous of Elva, and whenever he showed a dis- 
position to sulk she would say that she must make 
her acquaintance — a covert threat that nearly made 
him insane with fear. Of Priscilla she was not 
jealous, believing that marriage to be nothing more 
than an intrigue like her own ; but the openly ex- 
pressed affection which he felt for his first wife, the 
respect he was so careful to show at all times, were 
gall and wormwood. 


THE WAY OP THE MARRIED IS HARD. 1^1 

He grew pale, careworn, and moody, Elva made 
no sign, although she observed it, but Priscilla who 
partly divined the cause, comforted and cheered 
him. Her sympathy gave him strength to hear his 
burden and kept him from suicide, which he had 
more than once contemplated. One day, Priscilla 
complained of a sore throat. Three days after she 
died of malignant diphtheria while Lawrence was 
absent from the city. 

The day before the funeral, Polhemus returned 
from the Brazils, and as the two men stood by the 
open grave Lawrence vowed that he would never 
again voluntarily meet his third wife. He wrote 
and told her so. 

But Susan was not to be cast off so easily. A 
wife is not a mistress,” she replied. She insisted 
and then commanded him to keep the usual tryst. 
Broken down with grief — for it was not until he lost 
Priscilla that he knew how dear she had become — 
he could not summon courage to refuse a second 
time. 

Whether she had grown careless and reckless, 
or w’hether she had deliberately fostered suspicion 
will never be known. Polhemus followed her to 
the flat, opened the unlocked door, and walked in. 

His outburst of rage was met by her with 
laughter and applause. Lawrence said nothing 
after offering a cigar and asking him to set down. 
He was unarmed ; Lawrence was the stronger. He 
refused the cigar and took the chair. Then Susan 
invited his attention to the marriage certificate 
rampant with divorces couchant on a field d’or, and 


1^2 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

asked him what he thought he could do. He had 
made himself fully cognizant of the conditions under 
which Lawrence had married Priscilla, and he saw 
instantly that the same procedure had been gone 
through in the present case. This and Lawrence’s 
absolute indifference calmed him, although he kept 
up his bluster. Susan advised him to take his 
revenge in a lawful way, and assured him that he 
would only be laughed at if he made an outcry. 

“ The sad old earth must borrow its mirth 

But has troubles enough of its own,” 

she sang mockingly. He left them vowing ven- 
geance, after saying enough to make it clear to 
Lawrence why he had married her. 

The lawyer whom Poihemus consulted declared 
that he had ample grounds for divorce. An emi- 
nent counsel, an expert in such cases, was engaged, 
and then it was found what in his secret heart he 
knew — that his wife’s position was unassailable if 
properly defended, as it would be by Lawrence ; 
and to bring proceedings was to make himself an 
object of ridicule. More, as he cooled he saw that 
even victory meant ruin, for his wife owned the 
share in the business he managed. Financially he 
was at her mercy — and she had none. There was 
nothing to do but to separate or to swallow the 
affront. He swallowed it, and asked Susan what 
she had meant by taking his revenge in a lawful 
way. 

Lawrence had declared when Poihemus left them 
that he would never meet her again and had been 


THE WAY OP THE MARRIED IS HARD. 123 

firm against reproaches and threats. He was 
apathetic and said she might do her worst ; he did 
not care. She was wild for revenge. ‘‘Play the 
same trick on him that he has played on you. 
Elope with or marry his wife and I will transfer the 
business to you,” she replied. 

Priscilla’s sudden death had shocked Elva. Al- 
though she had never mentioned her name to Law- 
rence she had learned so many things to her credit 
that she had ceased to think of her as a vile woman — 
which had been her first impression. Her mother 
had met Priscilla and had been strongly attracted to 
her, and she knew her mother had excellent judg- 
ment. She could not but see that Priscilla’s influence 
had been for good, and she knew that the trouble in 
her husband’s face had been caused by something 
unconnected with either marriage. An hour after 
hearing that Priscilla was dead, and while she still 
sat, stunned, thinking of the woman whom she had 
seen in Macy’s three days before, the picture of 
radiant health, now robed for the grave, the post- 
man handed in the following letter, written in 
pencil, on a pad, and evidently with great difficulty, 
the envelope address being almost illegible : 

“I am dying and will be dead when you get this. 
We both love him ; but I do not repine at being 
taken even though I may not bid him farewell, 
because you can save him, and I could not, from the 
danger that threatens. He must leave New York 
for a year or two, and he will not go without you 
and his children. He cannot ask you to break up 
your strong home ties, he says, to escape the punish- 


124 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCfi. 

ment of his folly, and he will not leave you. But 
I, who will in an hour or two be beyond your blame, 
can ask you to save him by letting the proposal 
come from you. If you think I have wronged you, 
remember that I am dead. If you remember his 
wrong, think of it only as buried in my grave. My 
dying prayer wiU be that he and you may have long 
years of happiness, and soon forget Priscilla.” 

That afternoon, after leaving Susan, Lawrence 
went directly home. His wife had callers, and he 
sat down in the extension to the parlors, staring in 
the fire, the hum of voices from the other room 
crashing through his head hke a steam whistle. 
When they left, his wife came to the portiere. He 
had not moved for an hour, and the hopeless suffer- 
ing in his face went to her heart. Coming softly to 
him, she put her arm around his neck, and kissed 
him tenderly as he looked up. He drew her in his 
lap and looked into her face. She covered his eyes 
with her hand and kissed his lips. 

Jack, won’t you take us — just us four — ^to Spain 
or Italy, or — or somewhere we can be aU alone to 
ourselves for a little while ? ” 

‘^But you — ^you cannot wish to go — ^to leave your 
mother and sisters ? ” he stammers. Do you mean 
it ? ” There is a ring of dehght in his voice that she 
catches. 

Yes, ’’she says firmly, “Ido mean it. It will 
do the children good.” Then she breaks down. 
“For your sake and mine. Jack,” she whispered 
brokenly, “ and for Priscilla’s.” 

“^What do you mean ? ” he asks. 


THE WAY OF THE MARRIED IS HARD. 125 

She takes Priscilla’s letter from her bosom and 
hands it to him. His hand trembles and his tears 
fall like rain — the first he has shed — as he tries to 
read the scrawl and miderstands the agony she 
must have suffered in the writing. Elva’s tears 
mingle with his. 

When he hands the letter back she folds it up 
and puts it in his pocket. Keep it,” she whispers, 

while you live — and let us sad Saturday. I am 
ready.” 

They have not yet returned to the United States 
and Van Zandt Polhemus is still waiting for an 
opportunity to take a lawful revenge. Mrs. 
Polhemus- Lawrence, disgusted with lawful hus- 
bands, has taken again to unlawful lovers who 
sneak. 


MARRIAGE A FELONY. 


C gOLD SPEING, New York, is a village of a 
single street, running uphill from the Hudson 
river for about a mile. There the road forks, 
one track turning sharply to the left and 
north, the other continuing to mount the hills that 
lie between Cold Spring and Carmel, the county 
seat. Following the north fork, about half a mile, 
one passes a clump of trees that for a short space 
shuts out all sight of Bull Hill or the towering 
Crow’s Nest. There is nothing in sight. The sandy 
road is the only evidence that man has ever been 
there, and the only promise that he will ever come 
again. There is not even a fence. Dense bushes 
and briars alone mark its boundary.. But there is 
an opening in the bush, if you look closely, and the 
adventurous explorer who forces his way within 
finds semblance of a path which leads to a little 
clearing behind the trees. There, against a high 
rock, which protects it from the fierce northern 
winds, pouring down from the Beacon, is a small 
shanty — literally, a chiente, or dog-house — of one 
room and low attic that has for a window a single 
pane of glass. Here lives now, and lived seven 
years ago, Wilham Felder, the town drunkard, har, 
bully (when tipsy) and loafer. Twenty-five years 


MARRIAGE A FELONY. 


127 


ago at eighteen, when he enlisted, he was, to use 
the common expression, ^^as good as they make 
’em in Putman county.” His father was a prosper- 
ous, well-to-do farmer, owning about two hundred 
acres of good land and about five hundred acres 
more of scrub. William was his second son. The 
elder was killed at Fredericksburg ; William came 
home in 1865 without a scar, but with a hatred for 



FELDER’S CHIENTE. 


work and a contempt for honesty — a gambler and 
drunkard by choice. 

This was not apparent at first. He married Janet 
Snead, the daughter of a widow in the village, and 
for a year or two affairs went smoothly enough. 
His mother died while he was in the army ; his 
father followed the mother in less than a year after 
his return and within a few months after the mar- 
riage. 


128 


TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 


William would not work. He made long visits to 
New York, he was one of the boys,” and a mort- 
gage was put on the farm at the 
end of a year. The five hundred 
acres were sold to meet the ex- 
penses of the next. At the end 
of five years not an acre was 
left, and the family were living 
in the village near the railway, 
his wife supporting them by 
sewing and washing, while he 
swept out the two rum holes 
near the wharf ^Hor his drinks.” 
By that time they had three 
children, the elder a girl, the two younger, boys. 
This fife lasted two years, and then Janet, a re- 
markably strong and healthy woman when she 
married, died from want, privation, overwork, and 
brutal treatment. 

Two weeks after his wife’s death, William brought 
to Cold Spring a red-faced virago, fully ten years 
older than himself, for a mother to his children. 
The house in which they had lived was torn down 
by the railroad company, and the family moved into 
the shanty above the forks, which had been built 
originally for two young men camping out one 
summer. The second wife was no more inclined to 
work than her husband, and quiet as wiUing to look 
upon the rum when it was red. How they hved 
was a mystery. William always paid cash for his 
rum and bought little else. He no longer earned it 
on the wharf. Where he got the money no one 



MARRIAGE A FELONY. 


129 


knew. Very few cared. Now and then, some one 
driving along the lonely road and seeing a child’s 
face peering out of the bushes, would remember, 
pity them for a mometit, and straightway forget 
their existence. 

There was one exception — large-hearted Charlie 
Warren, whose broad acres crov/n the hills. But 
for his protecting hand and generous bounty the 
children would have shared the mother’s fate. 
Every morning his wagon, loaded with milk cans 
for town, took the long detour by the north road 
instead of the straight one down hill, and every 
morning some one of the children were waiting to 
catch the bundle he had ready to hand them. 

When Laura, the eldest child, was twelve years 
old, Mrs. Felder went one bitter cold day to the 
village. She tramped back, intoxi- 
cated, missed her way, and was 
found dead two days after, lying 
by the roadside. She had taken a 
nap and been frozen to death. 

Felder was away at the time. 

When he returned he remained 
only a few days, and then dis- 
appeared. 

By that time Laura had begun 
to earn money. She was very 
large for her age, strong, and in 
appearance a woman. Strength she inherited from 
her mother, the Sneads being famous for their size 
and development. She had been, in fact, the 
mother of this family since Janet’s death ; not only 



LAURA AT 15 . 


130 TALES OP MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

the only mother her brothers remembered, but the 
only mother that the little girl whom Mrs. Felder 
the second added had ever known. Several offers 
of a home were made to Laura, but no one would 
take the others. They must go to the poorhouse. 
Laura declined those that did not include the 
children — in other words, all. She made arrange* 
ments with four neighbors for one day’s work a 
week each, and took upon herself the care of the 
family. Three years passed. It was a heavy load, 
but Laura carried it bravely and well, growing in 
health and strength. Physically there was no finer 
woman in the village. Then her father reappeared 
and there was another mouth to feed. In fact there 
were several, for he often had visitors, strangers to 
the little town. 

About 1 o’clock in the morning, when the snow 
was about a foot deep, Eobert Ganett was driving 
his mother home to Bound Top from a party in the 
village. As they passed the clump of trees they 
heard cries and sobs. They stopped and found the 
three half-naked children in the road, and Laura in 
a night dress, trying to soothe them. Without 
stopping to ask any questions all four were bundled 
into the sleigh, taken to Ganett’s and thawed out. 
Laura said simply that they were turned out, but 
the eldest boy explained that a man had tried to 
come up into the attic where they were and that 
Laura had opened the scuttle and climbed upon the 
rock ; that when they began to cry their father had 
kicked them out doors. 

Mrs. Ganett, a widow in easy circumstancdi, 


MARRIAGE A FELONY. 


131 


took kindly to the children. She was not a Cold 
Springer and knew little of their story until she 
heard it from their lips. She kept them all and in- 
formally adopted them as hej: own. Their father 
never visited them. He told Warren he did not 

^^know or care a when the latter inquired 

where they were. 

Robert Ganett, his mother’s only child, was 
twenty-five — a rather silent, strong, self-reliant 
man, respected by everyone. His 
face was rugged, with none of 
the delicate beauty of his mother 
(who was ^^one of the beautiful 
Warrens ”)? but one which would 
be trusted anywhere ; which 
there was no mistaking for any 
but the face of an honest man. 

Anyone who looked into his 
clear blue ey^ would have 
added, and a warm-hearted one. 

Before the Felders had been living for a year in 
the Ganett house, known as Round Top, from the 
peculiar shaped hiU it crowned, when the harvest 
moon was shining, the old, old story was told 
under the maple trees. Laura would not consent 
at first, on account of the younger children, but 
his own and his mother’s assurances soon removed 
that objection — and she had no other. Mrs. Gan- 
ett joined her son in pressing for an immediate 
marriage. She was dying of an incurable disease, 
and the end might come at any moment, although 
it might be delayed for years. If she should die 



ROBERT GANETT. 


13 ^ 


TxiLES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 


before the marriage, she urged, it would leave 
Laura and the children unprovided for, and place 
them all in an embarrassing position. 

Laura consented, and they were married. She 
was then in appearance at least twenty-one. Many 
would have taken her for twenty-two or twenty- 
three. In Reality, she lacked two days of her 
sixteenth birthday when she took her place as the 
mistress of Round Top. Mrs. Ganett, the elder, by 
this time was unable to walk and confined to her 
Bath-chair. The greatest cross that had been laid 
upon her was the denial of a daughter’s love, and 
in the closing hours of her life she gave to Laura 
all that she would have poured out upon one of her 
own. It was an undivided kingdom of love over 
which Laura had been called to reign. 

The boys worshipped Robert — “Uncle Bob,” as 
he insisted on their calling him. Had they been 
able they would have set up a gravefi image of him. 
Right and Left his mother called them, because 
they were always at his side. They were sent to 
the high school, where they made wonderful pro- 
gress, winning the good opinion of the old for their 
mental ability and the respect of their comrades for 
their abnormal strength. Alice, the delicate and 
fragile child who at ten seemed still an infant, re- 
ceived the ablest medical attention and the most 
loving care, and both were necessary to keep her 
alh e. The change from the shanty. On the north 
road to this beautiful home, from want to plenty, 
from brutality and neglect to refinement and affec- 
tion, at first a dream, from which the children often 


MARRIAGE A FELONY. 


133 


expressed fears of awakening, grew as the months 
passed into a reality. The days of their wretched- 
ness began to get dim and shadowy and to take 
on the vagaries of dreamland. 

And Laura ! She, more than they, knew what 
the change really meant. The wife of a man of 
noble nature, who honored her and loved her as the 



ROBERT GANETT’S HAPPY HOME. 


first among women, and whom she equally honored 
and loved in return, the heart-child of one of the 
sweetest and truest of women, upon whom she in 
return poured out all the pent-up affection of 
years, what greater happiness could woman have ? 
How did she come by it ? With mother, husband, 
brothers, sister surrounding her ; with love and af - 


134 


TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 


fection wrapping her on every side, surely this was 
more than a foretaste of heaven. Was it not heaven 
itself ? 

Nearly two years passed without a cloud. No 
frowning Providence for a moment hid his smiling 
face. 

Then Felder signified his return by a call at Gan- 
ett’s. He was well-dressed, clean shaven and quite 
different in appearance from the 
time he left. It was not that he 
had reformed. Drunkenness did 
not pay in the game he was 
playing. That was all. He de- 
manded the surrender of Alice. 
This was refused. He became 
abusive and Ganett ordered 
him off. A few days after 
Ganett received notice of a suit 
by Felder for $5,000 damages for 
the loss of the service of his 
daughter Laura between her sixteenth and twenty- 
first years, and an injunction was served at the 
same time forbidding him to dispose of his property. 
He merely laughed. 

^^Keally, mother, we ought to pay something for 
our good angel,” was his comment. 

‘Ht would bankrupt us, Eob, dear, to pay what 
she is worth,” was the reply. 

It did even more than that. 

Felder called again, this time with a friend, whom 
he introduced as ‘‘Mr. Chapman, a lawyer from 
New York.” An offer to withdraw the suit upon 



MR. CHAPMAN, 
THE LAWYER. 


MARRIAGE A FELONY. 


13S 


the surrender of Alice was met with a curt refusal. 
Every effort at compromise having failed, they be- 
gan to threaten. Ganett, without a word, picked 
up Felder and threw him over the gate, while the 
two boys seized the lawyer and ran him out into the 
road in a very undignified manner. ‘‘If I find 
either of you lurking within one niile of my house 
I will horsewhip you till you cannot stand,” was his 
ultimatum. 

Nothing was heard from either for ten days. 
Then a deputy sheriff appeared with a warrant for 
Ganett’s arrest upon a charge of “ abduction.” The 
grand jury had indicted him under section 282 of 
the Criminal Code for marrying Laura : 


Sec. 278. If the child 
is over ten years of age 
there is no felonious 
assault, provided she con- 
sent ; and if she be under 
fourteen and over ten 
the parent may consent 
for her. — As construed 
Peo. vs. Morrison, 1 
Park, 625 ; Peo. vs. Brans- 
by, 32 N. Y., 525. 

Amended March 
1886. 


Sec. 282. A person 
who takes a female 
under the age of sixteen 
years, without the con- 
sent of the father or 
mother, for the pur'pose 
of marriage^ is guilty of 
abduction and punish- 
able by imprisonment for 
not more than five years, 
or by a fine of not more 
than $1,000, or by both. 


Bail was furnished and able counsel were en- 
gaged. There could be no doubt that the statute had 
been violated. His lawyers informed him that he 
had no defense and advised him to plead guilty and 
throw himself on the mercy of the Court. His case 


136 


TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 


could then be presented ex parte to the judge in 
mitigation of sentence. 

The advice was followed. It had to be. His 
.counsel were permitted to tell the story, and it was 
with an eloquence rarely heard in that sleepy town. 
When it was finished the district attorney, who 
listened with the closest attention, said that he was 
perfectly satisfied with the statement and had no- 
thing to say. 

Two days after Ganett was brought up for sen- 
tence, which was understood substantially as fol- 
lows : 

Prisoner at the bar, you have pleaded guilty of 
one of the most heinous offenses known to the law 
— a felony which the statute classes with man- 
slaughter, arson, burglary, forgery and counter- 
feiting. I have given the circumstances of the case 
a very careful and impartial examination. You 
married the girl, without the consent of her natural 
protector and guardian, while she was stiU within 
the statutory age. That she only lacked a few days 
or hours of being sixteen aggravates your offense. 
Had you been satisfied with meretricious and not 
marital relations, with taking her for your mistress 
instead of your wife, while she remained under six- 
teen, you could not have been convicted of any 
offense ; but, in open defiance of the law of the 
State, to show your contempt for its authority and 
the provision it has made (in section 278) for such 
circumstances, you wrongfully and feloniously 
MAKRIED her. I shall take into consideration your 
plea of guilty, which saves the people the expense 


MARRIAGE A FELONY. 


137 


of a trial, and also your previous good character, 
which I believe is conceded.” The district attorney 
bowed. ‘‘ The sentence of the Court is that you be 
confined in the State prison at hard labor for the 
period of three years and six months. I omit the 
fine, as a civil suit is impending over you.” 

Ganett stood respectfully listening, but not a 
muscle of his face moved, nor was the slightest 
emotion shown at the sentence. As the judge 



GANETT ADDRESSING THE JUDGE. 


turned to his book, Ganett said, in a gentle, respect- 
ful manner which instantly attracted attention : 

^‘If Your Honor please, I hope I may be per- 
mitted to say one word, which it was not proper to 
say before the sentence, and with your permission, 
have it made a part of the record. I do not ques- 
tion that Your Honor has correctly stated the law, 


13S 


TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DR^ORCE. 


nor do I complain at the sentence of the Court; but 
I wish to say that I am glad that I committed this 
crime; that I welcome the punishment which the 
law imposes as an honor; that the stripes I shall 
wear will be to me an emblem of dignity, and that 
I shall never regret having married my wife, wha/fc- 
ever the consequences may be.” 

The simple dignity, the quiet manner, the nat- 



LJLURA SERVED WITH A NOTICE TO PRODUCE ALICE. 

uralness and earnestness of his words impressed 
even the judge, and he replied quickly: 

^‘Mr. Ganett, you will take with you the honor 
and esteem of every person in this room. I am 
here to administer the law as I find it, not to make 
it, and more I cannot say without propriety.” 

No appeal was possible, and Robert Ganett served 
two years and eight months, receiving ten months’ 
commutation for good behavior. 

One month after the gate at Sing Sing had closed 


MARRIAGE A FELONY. 


139 


upon him, his wife was served with a notice to pro- 
duce the body of Alice Felder in court and show 
cause why she should not be delivered into her 
father’s custody. The judge was in a hurry and 
hungry, and the short horse was soon curried. Sev- 
eral smooth-faced men from New York swore that 
the father was a man of responsibility. Laura was 
not permitted to testify to the past, and could not 
say that her father was not at present a proper per- 
son. 



SOME OF THE JUEY. 


Where is your husband V she was asked. 

Her counsel objected vainly. ^^We are willing 
to admit that her husband is a convict,” he finally 
said, ^^but Your Honor will not consider that it 
affects the question when I explain — ” 

do not wish any explanation,” interrupted the 
judge dryly, ^^nor to hear anymore. The parent 
is entitled to the custody of the child. Mr. Clerk, 
adjourn the court.” 

The sobbing girl was turned over to her father, 


140 


TALES OP MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 


but the next day he called upon Laura and offered 
to let Alice remain with the family upon condition 
that whenever he might desire to take her away he 
should be free to do so. He was fair spoken, and 
his offer was accepted in good faith by the two al- 
most broken-hearted women. . 

The trial at the next term of the court of the suit 
for damages from loss of services, resulted in a ver- 
dict for $2,348 and cost. The defendant’s conviction 
in the criminal suit made a defense impossible. 
One of the jurymen said afterwards: ‘‘We thought 
that a girl who could support a family of that size, 
all by herself, was worth at least $9 per week to 
the father. We didn’t believe any one would take 
such a contract for less. Ganett’s well off and can 
afford to pay. The judge omitted the $1,000 fine in 
order to help to meet this expense.” 

Ganett was worth about $12,000 at the time of 
his indictment. A temporary mortgage of $1,500 
to get ready money for the trial and expenses had 
been placed by permission of the Court. The costs, 
by clever manipulation, had been dehberately run 
up to over $600. When an execution was issued to 
satisfy the judgment, no opportunity was given to 
obtain the money by a second mortgage. The 
property was seized and sold at public vendue for 
$4,600 — just enough to cover the liens and fees. 

One morning Felder appeared. He wanted to 
give Alice a trip to New York and would bring her 
back in a week, he said, and the unsuspecting 
women parted from her without a suspicion. 

The next morning the two women were notified 


MARRIAGE A FELONY. 


141 


by the purchaser to leave. The two boys, strong, 
hkely lads, had obtained work with Ganett’s cousin 
in New York, and Laura and the mother resolved 
to join them. 

In the far eastern section of the city there is a 
quaint street, smelling of cedar and pine, that once 
was crowded by busy shipwrights, but is now given 
over to white-haired old men, who sit on the stoops 
of the httle two-story houses along its western side 
all the summer afternoons, facing the logs piled up 
in what were once the yards, and quarrel over their 
estimates of how many coasters might have been 
built out of them by the men who a generation ago 
came trooping to labor at the sound of the old Me- 
chanics’ beU. This is Lewis street, and within 
sound of the hammers from the Morgan Iron 
Works — the only noise ever heard — the two women 
found two cheap rooms and there began their 
weary waiting — the one for Death and the other for 
Eobert. 

Well was it that no knowledge of the horrible 
fate which had overtaken their beloved Alice was 
added to their brimming cup of sorrow. 


AN HABITUAL CRIMINAL. 


^pp&HERE are over fifty pretty villages nestling 
J| among the hills of Herkimer County, but, 
1 1 with the exception of the titular county seat, 

A, there is not a single town, although Ilion 
and Little Falls seek the title. Few, if any, of the 
counties of New York are so thoroughly rural; so 
thoroughly bucolic. The enormous changes so evi- 
dent in the cities and towns, made by steam, elec- 
tricity and wire during the past twenty years, have 
not affected Herkimer in the least. What it was a 
generation ago it is to-day. 

Four miles from this village, on the Ridge road, 
four farms corner and four substantial farm-houses 
cluster within pistol-shot. Rifle-shot away, farther 
on, two small embowered cottages, covered with 
vines, face one another. Both are very pleasant to 
look upon. They are the homes of culture and re- 
finement, if not of wealth, but over one of them 
hangs a cloud which has not a silver lining. 

The stretch of road along her6 is one of the most 
delightful drives in summer to be found anywhere. 
Locust, beech, and maple trees line the road for 
over a mile on either side, planted three genera- 
tions ago, making almost a cathedral aisle through 


AN HABITUAL CRIMINAL. 143 

which the noonday sun can hardly find an opening 
for a glinting shaft. 

The largest of the farm-houses, the one with the 
greatest number of out-houses, the fattest cattle, 
and the biggest barns, is the first on the north side 
of the road. It belongs to Jacob Runyon, a gradu- 
ate of Dartmouth, who forty years ago married 
Harriet Ripley, the only child of the owner, Richard 
Ripley, a descendant of the pioneer. They began 
housekeeping in the little cottage on the north side 
of the road, which was built for them. Despite the 
old adage concerning marriages where the name 
but not letter is changed, theirs proved a happy 
one up to last year. All have trials, and they 
doubtless had theirs, but, with the exception of one, 
merely those which come to every household. On 
the whole they were happy and contented. Jacob 
was industrious and prudent, but not ambitious. 
They foregathered, and when the Ripleys died and 
the daughter inherited, Jacob had almost as much 
of his own as they. The inheritance carried him to 
the front and made him what he is to-day the 
^Svarmest” man for miles around. 

Nearly twenty years of married life had passed, 
the old folks slept, before the cross was removed 
and a child was born. But he grew to be the light 
of their eyes, the staif of their declining years. 
Boy and man, the county never knew one braver, 
brighter, franker, more lovable, than Richard Rip- 
ley Runyon, or Dick' Runyon, as he is known to the 
township. Before he was sixteen his father trusted 
him in all things, admitting him to the wise com- 


144 


TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 


panioiiship and steadying equality of an elder. 
When asked why, he replied; 

^‘Dick is the best boy a father ever had, but his 
sunny temper and strong sense of humor make it 
necessary to put a little responsibility on him now 
and then. It steadies him.” 

Sunny tempered he was, and fond of jest. He 
never joined a group where a smile did not follow 
his advent. But he was no practical joker. His 
jests, only of the tongue, carried no sting, for his 
kindly, sympathetic heart shrank instinctively from 
giving pain. In all the county there was not one 
who had an unkindly feeling towards him until 
last summer, when he went wooing Letty Stouter, 
the youngest daughter of Wilham Stouter, who oc- 
cupies the last farm-house on the south side of the 
road, and is accounted almost as warm ” as Jacob 
Kunyon himself. 

To-day Eichard Eunyon is an habitual criminal. 
His broken-hearted mother lies sleeping behind the 
church whose beUs are tolling as I write. His 
broken-hearted father is dying or dead, and his 
broken-hearted wife is in a decline and cannot live 
many weeks. 

What has he done ? Let me tell the story. 

Letty, whose nose was never disjointed by a 
later child, was educated better than her sisters. 
She was sent to the seminary and then for a year to 
a good boarding-school. She had a natural gift for 
music, which was cultivated. So had Dick, but his 
was not cultivated. His three years in Union Col- 
lege did not include music, while her year in board- 


AN HABITUAL CRIMINAL. 145 

ing-school did. When she returned she at once 
took a prominent place in the social life of the town- 
ship. She became the organist of the little church, 
led the singing in church and Sunday-school, and 
was made the secretary of the church societies. 
For ten miles around every young man came a-court- 
ing and went home non-suited — that is, all but 
Dick. 

The superintendent of the Sunday-school, a wid- 
ower with five children, all boys, is John E. Walters. 
He has filled several county offices, has been a candi- 
date for the Legislature, and is now the Justice of 
the Peace, Supervisor, and a local Pooh-Bah. He is 
also a warm ’’ man, but his political influence gives 
him precedence over all other warm ” men. He is 
the local magnate par excellence. 

Letty had not been the organist more than three 
months before Squire Walters’ buggy began to ar- 
rive at the Stouter farm-house every Wednesday 
evening with unvarying regularity. Letty did not 
appreciate the compliment. Dick came a- wooing 
nearly every afternoon and evening — and invariably 
on Wednesday evening. 

One day Dick received a summons to appear be- 
fore Squire Walters. When he came into the little 
court-room and asked what he was wanted for, 
Walters explained that he had received a complaint 
that Dick ha^d been playing ball on the Sunday pre- 
vious. Dick explained that on that morning he had 
been leaning against his gate and Tom Corey, a boy 
of ten, who lived opposite, had tossed a ball to him 
and asked if he thought it would do for the match. 


14 () TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

He examined it, tossed it back and said it would. 
They ha(i merely examined it and thrown it but 
once. 

‘Hdl have to fine you $1,” said Squire Walters. 

Dick paid the fine, with a laugh, and went out. 

Two or three weeks passed. Then he received 
another invitation to attend court. This time he 
was charged with hunting on Sunday. He explained 
that a wild cat had killed a lot of chickens that 
morning and he took a gun and went out to hunt 
for her. He did not find her and did not fire the 
gun off. 

He was fined $1. This time he did not smile. 
He went straight to Letty, and within twenty-four 
hours their engagement was known to every one. 

Squire Walters’ buggy did not appear the next 
Wednesday night, but a summons did. Dick obeyed 
it. This time he was charged with fishing in a 
brook on a Sunday some ten months previously. 
Dick pleaded guilty. He did not even plead in 
extenuation what was true — that he had not caught 
an5rfching. 

He was fined $1. 

By thi^time there began to be talk. That the 
Squire should have received the ‘‘sack,” as they 
call it here, did not astonish any one. Letty was a 
delicate, sensitive girl, totally unfitted to take 
charge of five stout, headstrong boys, ranging in 
age from six to fifteen, who had for several years 
almost run wild. That Dick should have won her 
seemed perfectly natural and proper. But that the 
Squire should not take his “mitten” graciously, 


AN HABlTtiAL CRIMINAL. 


147 


that he should show feeling against Dick, surprised 
them. 

Some one more venturesome than the others 
attempted to jest with him about it. 

Dick Runyon shall never marry her,” was the 
reply. 

These words, of course, were taken to the lovers, 
and they were married two months after, going to 
live in the little cottage where Dick’s father and 
mother began their life. 

Last fall, at the county fair, Dick was one of the 
exhibitors and prize-winners. One day the gate- 
keeper stepped back for a moment. Squire Walters 
was standing by. Dick walked in, but came back 
a few minutes after and paid. An hour after he 
was arrested. Squire Walters was the complainant. 
Dick was clearly guilty of a technical violation of 
the Criminal Code, but the magistrate took into 
consideration the fact that he had afterf^^ards paid, 
and fined him only $1. 

Shortly after his return home Tom Corey came 
crying to Dick, while he was standing in front of 
the Post-Ofhce, and told him that his uncle, Robert 
Corey, a constable, had cuffed him and taken away 
his ball. Here's a quarter, Tom, for a new ball,” 
he replied, and tell your uncle that if he takes this 
away from you I’ll nail his ears to Mrs. Peters’ 
pump.” Corey is six feet four, the largest man in 
this section. Dick is five feet eight, rather slender. 
The pump is only four feet high, and of iron. It 
was clearly a joke. 


148 


TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 


The next day he was summoned again and fined 
$5 for threatening an officer. 

‘‘If this sort of thing is any satisfaction to you,” 
he remarked to Walters, “I am quite satisfied. I 
do not think you can afford to keep it up so long as 
I can. There is such a thing as public sentiment, 
as you may find out in the course of time.” 

“And there is such a thing as the law, Eichard 
Eunyon, and you may find that its hand is heavy to 
smite if you come before me again.” 

“ 0 bother !” said Dick. 

The afternoon of December 16, Dick and his wife 
started in a sleigh to visit the uncle of the latter, 
who lives about a mile south of the village. On the 
way Dick overtook and passed the Squire. The 
next morning he was arrested and taken to court. 
Squire Walters did not act as complainant, but his 
“hand” did. The charge was for fast driving on 
the highway. The court-room was packed with a 
very quiet but keenly observant crowd. Everyone 
knew that it was persecution, and was anxious to 
see how Dick would take it. 

Dick was firm and dignified. He objected to the 
Court and was overruled. He demanded a jury 
trial and was overruled. . He then defended himself 
from the charge, denying that he was driving faster 
than the 'law permitted. He was convicted and 
fined $1. 

Without a word he pulled out his pocketbook, 
paid the fine and turned to walk out of the room. 

“Wait a moment ! ” commanded Squire Walters. 
“Come back here, Eichard Eunyon.” 


AN HABITUAL CRIMINAL.’ 149 

Dick walked back to the desk, facing him with 
head erect and eyes flashing. 

‘^Eichard Kunyon,” began the Squire, you have 
been six times convicted of misdemeanor under the 
Criminal Code of this State. I will read to you 
sections 690 and 691 of that code: 

^ Sec. 690. Where a person is hereafter convicted 
of a misdemeanor, who has been already flve times 
convicted of a misdemeanor, he may be adjudged by 
the court, in addition to any other punishment, to 
be an habitual criminal. 

^Sec. 691. The person of an habitual criminal 
shall be at all times subject to the supervision of 
every judical magistrate of the county, and of the 
supervisors and overseers of the poor of the town 
where the criminal may be found, to the same 
extent that a minor is subject to the control of his 
parent or guardian.’ 

‘‘I consider that you are a man dangerous to the 
community. I pity your parents, and, above all, 
your wife ; but I am an officer of the State, sworn 
to do my duty, and that duty compels me to use the 
discretion which has been placed in my hands, and 
to declare you to be henceforth an HABITUAL 
CEIMINAL.” 

Dick made a spring for Walters, but was seized 
by two strong men before he could reach him. 

Walters fined him $50 for contempt of court. 

Dick’s friends surrounded him and told him he 
could appeal the case to the County Court. They 
did not understand its gravity. 

have something further to say,” continued 


150 


TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 


Walters, which I wish you all to hear and under- 
stand. Under the law Eichard Eunyon has now no 
rights as a man. He is the ward of this court. 
He may not leave this township without my per- 
mission. He must report to me, every Monday 
morning. If at any time he fails to do this, or fails 
to obey my orders, I will have him committed to 
the State Prison for five years. This is the law. 
There is no appeal from it. All honest and law- 
abiding citizens will assist me in enforcing it.” 

This is a law-abiding community,, but when the 
facts were known it only needed a word from Dick 
to have had Walters lynched. That he did not 
speak the word was not from cowardice or lack of 
feeling. His mother and wife clung to him and 
begged him for their sakes not to do anything; to 
wait for justification before the courts, and he fore- 
bore. 

The next Sunday Squire Walters explained to 
the Sunday-school what an habitual criminal was, 
and why the law was passed. He instanced Dick, 
as an example, and then made the usual application. 
At the teachers’ meeting he asked if they desired 
to keep the wife of an habitual criminal as an 
organist. The next day she resigned. 

During the following week handbills containing 
the Habitual Criminal law, and the notification 
that Eichard E. Eunyon, having been duly 
convicted 'six times of misdemeanors under the 
Criminal Code of the State, had been declared by 
the courts an habitual criminal under it, were sent 
to every family in this and the adjoining townships. 


AN HABITUAL CRIMINAL. 1;M 

Those outside of this neighborhood, unacquainted 
with the actual facts, supposed that it was only an 
ordinary case of an ordinary criminal. As the days 
passed, the influence of Squire Walters made those 
who at first were hot against him more lenient, and 
in a short time Walters had the backing of all 
outside the neighborhood,* not one in fifty of whom 
knew anything about the merits of the case. Dick’s 
friends have stood by him manfully. They came 
within one vote of asking Walters to resign as su- 
perintendent, and have presented Dick w ith a set of 
resolutions signed by over a hundred persons, set- 
ting forth the facts, and their continued trust and 
confidence in him. 

W. W. Broderick, of Albany, and E. P. Ely, of 
Eochester, were retained to appeal the case. Mrs. 
Eunyon had perfect confidence that justice w'ould 
be done, and the stigma removed from her son. 
But the County Court refused to take the case un- 
der review, and when the news was abruptly com- 
municated to the mother she fainted. Ten minutes 
later she ‘was dead. 

Two weeks ago the Supreme Court also refused 
to interfere on the ground that a magistrate was 
the sole judge of the facts ; that Walters simply en- 
forced the law, that he did not exceed his powers 
under the law. 

Mr. Broderick brought the decision a v^eek ago 
last Tuesday. Since that time Jacob Eunyon has 
been confined to his bed, and will in all probability 
not hve till next Sunday. He is at his son’s 
house. 


152 


TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 


I asked Mr. Broderick •what could be done. 
‘‘Nothing,” he replied. “I am going to draw up 
a petition for his pardon, and I shall have his case 
brought strongly to the attention of Gov. Hill. 
I have no question but that ultimately we will have 
Mr. Eunyon restored to his rights. But it will not 
be worth the trouble, and will take months.” 

“ And cost a great deal of money ? ” 

“Naturally; but a man would spend all he was 
worth in such a case as this.” 

“ Can nothing be done to Walters? Can he not 
be sued civilly ? ” 

“No. A magistrate is above and beyond all re- 
sponsibility. He is absolute. If he wrongs a man 
and violates the law in so doing, the courts may 
sometimes interfere and right the wTong. But the 
magistrate is responsible to no one, either civilly or 
criminally, for any outrage. If, as in this case, he 
commits a foul wrong under color of the law, the 
courts will not interfere. There is no redress. A 
judgment may be set aside, sometimes, because it 
is possible for a magistrate to make a mistake, but 
no matter how wicked his conduct may be, the law 
does not admit for a moment that he is anything 
more than ‘ in error.’ If there is no mistake in his 
‘law”,’ he is not even in error.” 

“ What do you mean by its not being worth the 
trouble ? ” 

“Simply this, that within forty-eight hours after 
I bring the pardon Mr. Eunyon may be sent foi', 
fined $1 each upon six charges, and again declared 
an habitual criminal. Then all this work wull have 


AN HABITUAL CRIMINAL. 


153 


to be done over. I have advised him not to go to 
the expense, but he insists. It will take weeks to 
get a pardon; only hours for him to be again put 
under the ban.” 

^‘But Walters must have a charge. If Dick does 
not violate some law, he cannot be fined.” 

‘‘There is your error. No man can live ten 
minutes in the State of New York without com- 
mitting an act forbidden by law. Everything is 
forbidden — even to sneezing. And, as if this tyr- 
anny of law which sends a man to jail one year for 
accidentally dropping a pin on a street or highway 
was not enough, the same penalty is imposed for 
‘disorder’ and the magistrate is made the sole 
j Huge of what ‘ disorderly conduct ’ is. My shoes 
are not blacked. There is mud on the toe. Well, 
for walking through the village with unblacked 
boots I could be arrested and sent to jail for one 
year. I might get a pardon, but I could not get 
out in any other way. The charge would be ‘ dis- 
orderly conduct;’ the sentence, ‘one year.’ This 
would be all that could come before a higher court, 
and the sentence would have to be affirmed, as the 
case could not be re-tried on the facts, and the 
sentence is in accordance with the law.” 

“Then Dick is practically doomed. Even the 
Governor cannot save him.” 

“Not if Walters is in earnest and has resolution. 
If I bring a pardon back from Albany, as I hope to, 
Mr. Runyon may be within the walls of Dannemora 
within ten days after.” 

Dick has not left his house since his mother’s 


154 TALES OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCB. 

funeral. He has never reported to W alters. Every- 
one is expecting his arrest and commitment to the 
State prison. 

Stouter told me to-night that the family beheve 
Walters is holding the arrest back until Letty is 
actually dying, so that Dick shall not be with her 
when the end comes. 


DR. CHASE’S ROYAL REMEDIES. 


Dispose— Hello, Death, whero are you 
bound with that coffin under your arm f 
Death — Oh, I am on my way to Mr. 
Someone’s house, a few blocks below here. 

Disease— Why you are too late, I was 
Chased out of there a few hours ago 
by Dr. Chase’s Royal Remedies, and they 
have no use for you. 

(Both Together)— \t the people continue 
to use these Royal Remedies as they 
have been there will be no business for 
you nor me either in a very short time. 

The above illustration and conversation repi’esent and state a very import- 
ant fact, and if you or any of your friends wish to renew their health and re- 
move disease from the system, they cannot do better than to read the following 
list of remedies and then procure the one adapted to their case. Full directions 
for use accompany each box . 

The name of Dr. Chase has been for many years a household word in the 
home of everv farmer, mechanic, and brain worker, not only in this country but 
throughout the whole world, and in offering his remedies we do not hesitate to 
say that they will have a very great claim to a favorable recommendation. 
We do not claim that we have but one medicine and that it will cure “all the 
ills that flesh is heir to ” but we do say that the following remedies, if used ac* 
cording to the directions which accompany every box, willdo all that is claimed 
for them. Our confidence in them is so great that we will be pleased to refund 
the money in any case where they fail, where instructions are followed. 

The following are all put up in pill form, twenty pills to a box, making the 
cost per dose to the consumer very trifling. 



Remedy No. 1, Kidney Pill.— For 
Congestion and Inflammation of the 
Kidneys, Bright’s Disease, Irritation 
and Inflammation of the Bladder, all 
disorders of the Kidneys and Bladder. 
Price, 25 cents per box. 

Remedy No. 2, Cholera Pill.— For 
Diarrhoea, Dysentery, Cholera Morbus 
and Cholera". Price, 25 cents per box. 

Remedy No. 3, Blienmatic Pill.— A 
certain cure for Rheumatism, Gout, 
Lumbago, and all pains in Muscles and 
Joints. Mce, 25 cents per box. 

Remedy No. 4, Alterative Pill.— For 
Scofula, Salt-Rheum, Eczema, Ring- 
worm, Skin Eruptions, S^hilis and all 
diseases of the blood. Price, 25 cents 
per box. 

Remedy No. 6, Chase Liver Pill.— A 
radical cure for Constipation, Bilious 
and Sick Headache, Colic and To^id 
Liver. Those who once use this Liver 
Pill- will use no other afterward . Price, 
21 cents per box. 

Remedy No. 6, Dyspepsia Pill.— A 
specific for all forms of Acute and 
Chronic Dyspepsia. 25 cents per box. 


Remedy No. 7, Neurine Pill,- A 
Specific for Neuralgia, Sciatica, Nerv- 
ous Headache, Toothache, Hysterical 
Spasms, Insomnia and Nervous Irrita- 
bility. Price 25 cents per box. 

Remedy No. 8, Tonic Pill for W'omen. 
—A never failing remedy for all diseases 
and weaknesses peculiar to women. 
Price, 25 cents per box. 

Remedv No. 9, Malaria Pill.— A cure 
for Chills, Fever and Ague, Dumb 
Ague, Bilious and Malarial Fevers. 
This Pill can be used in place of 
Quinine, and will certainly cure all 
Malarial Disorders, without any of the 
injurious or unpleasant effects of 
Quinine. Price, 25 cents per box. 

Remedy No. 10, Private Tonic Pills. 
—A radical cure for nervous debility, 
general prostration, loss of manhood, 
private complaints, etc. This is the 
only remedy that can be used with a 
certainty of producing immediate bene- 
ficial results in the cases in which it 
is recommended. (This prescription 
usually costs $1.50 at any pharmacy. ) 
Price, 50 cents per box . 


These remedies may be ordered by the number if desired, indeed it is one of 
the best methods of ordering, then there can be no mistake. For sale by all 
druggists. Ask for Dr. Chase’s Royal Remedies, giving the number you desire, or 
send to us direct and we will fill all orders by return mail. Agents wanted to 
whom we offer liberal terms. 

Send money by Postal Note, Money Order, Check or Draft. One cent post- 
age stamps will be taken for sums under fifty cents. All of these Remedies will 
be sent by mail securely sealed. Address orders and remittances to 

DR. CHASE’S REMEDIES, 

F. C Box, S7$7 57 Rose Street, New York. 


THE SCIENCE OF A NEW LIFE. 

BY JOHN COWAN, M. D. 

A Book Well Worth Possessing Ij Everj Thonghtfnl * 
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DR. CHASE’S ROYAL REMEDIES 


Disease— HeWo, Death, where are you 
bound with that cofYin under your arm ? 

Death— Oh, I am on my way to Mr. 
Someone’s house, a few blocks below here. 

Disease — Why you are too late, I was 
Chased out of there a few hours ago 
by Dr. Chase’s Royal Remedies, and they 
have no use for you. 

{Both Together)— It the people continue 
to use these Royal Remedies as they 
have been there will be no business for 
you nor me either in a very short time. 

The above illustration and conversation represent and state a very import- 
ant fact, and if you or any of your friends wish to renew their health and re- 
move disease from the system, they cannot do better than to read the following 
list of remedies and then procure the one adapted to their case. Full directions 
for use accompany each box. 

The name of Dr. Chase has be^n for many years a household word in the 
home of every farmer, mechanic, and brain worker, not only in this country but 
throughout the whole world, and in offering his remedies we do not hesitate to 
say that they will have a very great claim to a favorable recommendation. 
We do not claim that we have but one medicine and that it will cure “ all the 
ills that flesh is heir to ” but we do say that the following remedies, if used ac- 
cording to the directions which accompany every box, will do all that is claimed 
for them. Our confidence in them is so great that we will be pleased to refund 
the money in any case where they fail, where instructions are followed. 

The following are all put up in pill form, twenty pills to a box, making the 
cost per dose to the consumer very trifling. 



Remedy No. 1, Kidney Pill.— For 
Congestion and InflaiuHiation of the 
Kidneys. Bright's Disease. Irritation 
and Inflammation of the Bladder, all 
disorders of the Kidnej s and Bladder. 
Price, 25 cents per box. 

Remedy No. 2, Cholera Pill.— For 
Diarrhoea. Dysentery, Cholera Morbus 
and Cholera. Price, 25 cents per box. 

Remedy No. 3, Rheumatic Pill.— A 
certain cure for Rheumatism. Gout. 
Lumbago, and all pains in Muscles and 
Joints. Price, 25 cents per box , 

Remedy No. 4, Alterative Pill.— For 
Scofula Salt-Rheum, Eczema, Ring- 
worm. Skin Eruptions, S.Tphilisand all 
cl ineases of the blood. Price, 25 cents 
per box. 

Remedy No. 5, Chase Liver Pill.- A 
radical cure for Constipation, Bilious 
find Sick Headache, Colic and Torpid 
Liver. Those who once use this Liver 
Pill will use no other afterward. Price, 
26 cents per box . 

Remedy No. G, Dyspepsia Pill.— A 
specific for all forms of Acute and 
Chronic Dyspepsia. 25 cents per box. 


Remedy No. 7, Neurine Pill,— A 
Specific for Neuralgia, Sciatica, Nerv- 
ous Headache, Toothache, Hysterical 
Spasms. Insomnia and Nervous Irrita- 
bility. Price 25 cents per box. 

Remedy No. 8, Tonic Pill for Women. 
—A never failing remedy for all diseases 
and weaknesses peculiar to women. 
Price, 25 cents per box. 

Remedy No. 9, Malaria Pill.— A cure 
for Chills, Fever and Ague, Dumb 
Ague, Bilious and Malarial Fevers. 
This Pill can be used in place of 
Quinine, and will certainly cure all 
Malarial Disorders, without any of the 
injurious or unpleasant effects of 
Quinine. Price, 25 cents per box. 

Remedy No. 10, Private Tonic Pills. 
— A radical cure for nervous debility, 
general prostration, loss of manhood, 
private complaints, etc. This is the 
only remedy that can be used with a 
certainty of producing immediate bene- 
ficial results in the cases in which it 
is recommended. (This prescription 
usually costs $1.50 at any pharmacy ) 
Price, 50 cents per box . 


These remedies may be ordered by the number if desired, indeed it is one of 
the best methods of ordering, then there can be no mistake. For sale by all 
druggists. Ask for Dr. Chase’s Royal Remedies, giving the number you desire, or 
send to us direct and we will fill all orders by return mail. Agents wanted 
whom we offer liberal terms. 

Send money by Postal Note, Money Order, Check or Draft. One cent post- 
age stamps will be taken for sums under fifty cents. All of these Remedies will 
be sent by mail securely sealed. Address orders and remittances to 

DR. CHASE’S REMEDIES, 

57 Rose Street, New York. 


P. O. Box, 2767 


THE CELEBRATED 

SOBHIE 

GKAiro, SQUARE AND UPRIGHT PIANOS. 


FIBST FBIZE 
DIPLOMA. 

‘ Centennial Exhibition. 
1876, Montreal, 1881 and 
1882. 

The enviable po- 
sition Sohmer & 
Go. hold among 
American Piano 
Manufacturers is 
solely due to the 
merits of their in- 
struments. 



They are used 
in Conservatories, 
Schools and Sem- 
inaries, on account 
of their superior 
tone and unequaled 
durability. 

The sohmer; 
Piano is a special 
favorite with the I 
leading musiciaps 
and critics. 


ARE AT PRESENT THE IHOST POPEliAR 

AND PREFERRED'BY THE LEADING ARTISTS.| 
^HMER dc 00 ., manttfacturers, Noe. 149 to 155 E. 14tl& St., N* Y. 

SCOTT’S EMULSION 

OF PURE COD LIVER OIL. 

WITH 

ULypophosphltes ofliime and Soda. 

A Creamy Mixture Almost as Palatable as Milk, 

Containing the tonic properties of the Hypophosphites combined 
with the Fattening and strengthening qualities of Cod Liver Oil, the 
potency of both being largely increased. 

The disagreeable taste of the oil is so disguised that the 
most delicate stomach can tahe it withend the slightest 
repugnance, 

BEMABKABLE AS A FLESH FBOBUCEB. 

Wc desire to emphasize the fact that no food or remedy known will 
so quickly restore the wasted powers of either the Adult or the delicate 
and Sickly Child, as this PALATABLE EMULSION, and in CON- 
SUMPTION, SCROFULA, BRONCHITIS, ANEMIA or IMPOV-- 
ERISHED BLOOD, EMACIATION* and all CONDITIONS of 
WASTING from whatever cause, the rapidity with which bodily 
waste is repaired, giving health and strength is truly marvelous. Forj 
Sale by all Druggists. 











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